Jakarta Commons Cookbook

Preface

In this book, you’ll find information about a set of libraries developed within the Jakarta Commons (also referred to as “Commons”). Commons (http://jakarta.apache.org/commons) is a set of small, popular components from the Apache Software Foundation’s Jakarta project. Ranging from the elementary to the complex, many would consider some of these libraries indispensable to any Java© project. These components are so widespread, they may already be on your classpath. If you develop an application using Jakarta Struts, Apache Tomcat, or Hibernate, you have Commons BeanUtils and Commons Logging in your classpath. If you just installed Red Hat Enterprise Linux with the default configuration, you’ve got Commons libraries somewhere in /usr. If you downloaded Sun’s J2EE 1.4 SDK, you will have also downloaded Commons Logging and Commons Launcher. While Jakarta Commons may be everywhere, many are still unaware of the capabilities these components provide.

This book uses Jakarta Commons to focus on tactical implementation details, answering such questions as: How do we parse XML? How do we serialize beans? Is there an easier way to work with Collections? How do we work with HTTP and keep track of cookies? The tactical is often sacrificed for the strategic. Consider a complex J2EE system with a solid, well-conceived architecture. The strategic (or high-level) design appears reasonable from 40,000 feet, but as soon as you drill into the details, you notice that every Servlet or JSP contains ...