Ajax on Java

Chapter 3. A Simple Ajax Servlet

In the previous chapter, we wrote a JavaScript/HTML client for a system that converts keystrokes to the corresponding decimal values. Now we need to focus on the backend: the Java servlet that provides the client with the information it needs. The XMLHTTPRequest( ) function in the client sends a request out into the ether; it doesn’t care what kind of server replies. The response can come from a PHP server, a .NET server, a server hosting Ruby on Rails, a Java server, and so on. Any server that can receive an HTTPRequest and respond with an HTTPResponse will do.

Since this is a book for Java developers, we’ll create a servlet that intercepts the request, converts the keystroke into its decimal representation, and sends the resulting data back to the client.

The first version of our servlet is very simple: it computes a single result (the value of the keystroke in decimal) and sends it back to the client. The complete servlet code is presented in Example 3-1.

Example 3-1. The AjaxResponseServlet

/* * Converts a character to decimal and sends back the * value in the response. */ package com.oreilly.ajax.servlet; import java.io.IOException; import javax.servlet.ServletException; import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet; import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest; import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse; public class AjaxResponseServlet extends HttpServlet { private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L; public void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse ...