JavaServer Pages, 3rd Edition

What Is a Bean?

As I said earlier, a bean is simply a Java class that follows certain coding conventions, so it can be used by tools as a component in a larger application. It can be instantiated and made available to the JSP page in a couple of ways. In an application that uses a servlet as a frontend for all business logic, the bean is typically created by the business logic code and sent to the JSP page to include its contents in the response. I describe this approach in detail in Chapter 19 and Chapter 20. The bean can also be created directly by a JSP page. This is the approach used in this chapter.

JavaBeans Introduction for Java Programmers

If you need to develop your own beans, here’s a brief description of what it takes to be a bean. (You can learn more about bean development for JSP pages in Chapter 20.) Beans are regular Java classes designed according to the set of guidelines defined by the JavaBeans specification. Here’s the CartoonBean used in this chapter:

package com.ora.jsp.beans.motd;
  
import java.util.*;
public class CartoonBean implements java.io.Serializable {
    private static int index = -1;
    private List fileNames;
  
    public CartoonBean(  ) {
        initFileList(  );
    }
  
    public String getFileName(  ) {
        index++;
        if (index > fileNames.size(  ) - 1) {
            index = 0;
        }
        return (String) fileNames.get(index);
    }
  
    private void initFileList(  ) {
        fileNames = new ArrayList(  );
        fileNames.add("dilbert2001113293109.gif");
        ...
    }
}

You should always use a package name for a bean class to make it easier ...