More Servlets and JavaServer Pages™

2.2. Basic Servlet Structure

Listing 2.1 outlines a basic servlet that handles GET requests. GET requests, for those unfamiliar with HTTP, are the usual type of browser requests for Web pages. A browser generates this request when the user enters a URL on the address line, follows a link from a Web page, or submits an HTML form that either does not specify a METHOD or specifies METHOD="GET". Servlets can also easily handle POST requests, which are generated when someone submits an HTML form that specifies METHOD="POST". For details on using HTML forms, see Chapter 16 of Core Servlets and JavaServer Pages (available in PDF at http://www.moreservlets.com).

Listing 2.1. ServletTemplate.java

import java.io.*; import javax.servlet.*; import javax.servlet.http.*; ...