BeforeEnterEvent.forwardToUrl(String) should forward to the given URL

Description of the bug / feature

With this before enter event handler

@Route(value = "hello")
public class HelloWorldView extends HorizontalLayout implements BeforeEnterObserver {

    @Override
    public void beforeEnter(BeforeEnterEvent event) {
        event.forwardTo("/hello/world/");
    }

and a servlet deployed using context path /context

You would expect that opening /context/hello would redirect to /hello/world/. Instead it redirects to /context/hello/world.

The URL is wrong (relative to /context) and the trailing slash is missing.

Minimal reproducible example

git clone https://github.com/Artur-/test-forward-to-url
cd test-forward-to-url
open http://localhost:8080/context/hello

Expected behavior

http://localhost:8080/hello/world/ is shown

Actual behavior

http://localhost:8080/context/hello/world is shown

Versions:

- Vaadin / Flow version: 19
- Java version: 15

[Artur-]

Based on the code and commits I would interpret it as forwardTo is for navigating to either a server (Flow) or client side (Fusion) view. In that case (and to prevent breaking compatibility) a forwardToUrl would make more sense.

The use case here is to be able to prevent navigation to a given view and redirect to a (maybe external) login view instead.

[pleku]

Maybe I’m missing something - but it looks to me that the existing forwardTo API in BeforeEvent is either

• for Flow based routes or paths to the routes
• for NavigationState which I think should not be even visible for users (?)

Now it should instead redirect to an URL outside the application ? Why not add forwardToUrl(String url) instead ? Basically like requested in https://github.com/vaadin/flow/issues/4606 but since redirectTo is not intended to update the URL, it should not be redirectTo but forwardTo instead. I don’t think it is possible to redirect without changing the url so the other issue is kind of invalid in that regard.