Head First Servlets and JSP, 2nd Edition

Initializing your JSP

You can do servlet initialization stuff in your JSP, but it’s slightly different from what you do in a regular servlet.

Configuring servlet init parameters

You configure servlet init params for your JSP virtually the same way you configure them for a normal servlet. The only difference is that you have to add a <jsp-file> element within the <servlet> tag.

Overriding jspInit()

Yes, it’s that simple. If you implement a jspInit() method, the Container calls this method at the beginning of this page’s life as a servlet. It’s called from the servlet’s init() method, so by the time this method runs there is a ServletConfig and ServletContext available to the servlet. That means you can call getServletConfig() and getServletContext() from within the jspInit() method.

This example uses the jspInit() method to retrieve a servlet init parameter (configured in the DD), and uses the value to set an application-scoped attribute.