Chapter 27
Programming with Servlets
Web applications can serve static or dynamic content. Some examples of static content are text files with HTML markup, images, and video. Dynamic content is formed on the fly. Think of a web application that enables you to browse the inventory of an online store. The content you see on your screen is being created based on your queries — in other words, dynamically.
In the Java EE world, web content is served either by a program running in a container with deployed servlets, JSP, JSF, or a third-party framework, or it’s a SOAP or RESTful Web Service. Servlets, JSP, and JSF not only return the data, but also present it as formatted HTML pages, hence the term presentation layer (refer to Figure 26-1). Web Services, on the other hand, return just the data (see Lesson 34).
A servlet is a Java program written by certain rules and deployed in a Java EE–compliant servlet container of your choice. The client program can be a lightweight HTML, JavaScript, applet, or JavaFX program. In this lesson I’ll be explaining the most widely used means of web communication: HTTP requests and responses. HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol.
All examples in this lesson will work in any Java EE container supporting the Servlet 3.0 specification. I use GlassFish v3.
Figure 27-1 shows a web browser making HTTP requests to MyServlet, a servlet written by you or another developer, and receiving HTTP responses that MyServlet sends back.
The Big ...
