Core Servlets and JavaServer Pages™: Volume 1: Core Technologies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 7. Generating the Server Response: HTTP Response Headers

Topics in This Chapter

• Format of the HTTP response

• Setting response headers

• Understanding what response headers are good for

• Building Excel spread sheets

• Generating JPEG images dynamically

• Sending incremental updates to the browser

As discussed in the previous chapter, a response from a Web server normally consists of a status line, one or more response headers (one of which must be Content-Type), a blank line, and the document. To get the most out of your servlets, you need to know how to use the status line and response headers effectively, not just how to generate the document.

Setting the HTTP response headers often goes hand in hand with setting the status codes in the status line, ...