JavaServer Pages (JSP) technology allows you to easily create Web content that has both static and

dynamic components. JSP technology projects all the dynamic capabilities of Java Servlet technology but provides a more natural approach to creating static content. The main features of JSP technology are
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A language for developing JSP pages, which are text-based documents that describe how to process a request and construct a response Constructs for accessing server-side objects Mechanisms for defining extensions to the JSP language

A servlet is a Java programming language class used to extend the capabilities of servers that host applications accessed via a request-response programming model. Although servlets can respond to any type of request, they are commonly used to extend the applications hosted by Web servers. Thus, it can be thought of as a Java Applet that runs on a server instead of a browser.[1] A Servlet is a Java class in Java EE that conforms to the Java Servlet API, a protocol by which a Java class may respond to requests. They are not tied to a specific client-server protocol, but are most often used with the HTTP protocol. Therefore, the word "Servlet" is often used in the meaning of "HTTP Servlet".[2] Thus, a software developer may use a servlet to add dynamic content to a Web server using the Java platform. The generated content is commonly HTML, but may be other data such as XML. Servlets are the Java counterpart to non-Java dynamic Web content technologies such as CGI and ASP.NET. Servlets can maintain state in session variables across many server transactions by using HTTP cookies, or URL rewriting. To deploy and run, the Apache Tomcat Server may be used. It is an open source servlet container developed by the Apache Software Foundation (ASF). Tomcat implements the Java Servlet and the JavaServer Pages (JSP) specifications from Sun Microsystems, and provides a "pure Java" HTTP web server environment for Java code to run. The servlet API, contained in the Java package hierarchy javax.servlet, defines the expected interactions of a Web container and a servlet.[2] A Web container is essentially the component of a Web server that interacts with the servlets. The Web container is responsible for managing the lifecycle of servlets, mapping a URL to a particular servlet and ensuring that the URL requester has the correct access rights. A Servlet is an object that receives a request and generates a response based on that request. The basic servlet package defines Java objects to represent servlet requests and responses, as well as objects to reflect the servlet's configuration parameters and execution environment. The package javax.servlet.http defines HTTP-specific subclasses of the generic servlet elements, including session management objects that track multiple requests and responses between the Web server and a client. Servlets may be packaged in a WAR file as a Web application. Servlets can be generated automatically from JavaServer Pages (JSP) by the JavaServer Pages compiler. The difference between Servlets and JSP is that Servlets typically embed HTML inside Java code, while JSPs embed Java code in HTML. While the direct usage of Servlets to generate

HTML (as shown in the example below) is relatively rare nowadays, the higher level MVC web framework in Java EE (JSF) still explicitly uses the Servlet technology for the low level request/response handling via the FacesServlet. A somewhat older usage is to use servlets in conjunction with JSPs in a pattern called "Model 2", which is a flavor of the model-viewcontroller pattern.

Contents
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1 History 2 Advantages over CGI o 2.1 Life cycle of a servlet o 2.2 Example 3 Usage 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

[edit] History
The complete servlet specification was created by Sun Microsystems, with version 1.0 finalized in June 1997. Starting with version 2.3, the servlet specification was developed under the Java Community Process. JSR 53 defined both the Servlet 2.3 and JavaServer Page 1.2 specifications. JSR 154 specifies the Servlet 2.4 and 2.5 specifications. As of March 26, 2010, the current version of the servlet specification is 3.0. In his blog on java.net, Sun veteran and GlassFish lead Jim Driscoll details the history of servlet technology. James Gosling first thought of servlets in the early days of Java, but the concept did not become a product until Sun shipped the Java Web Server product. This was before what is now the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition was made into a specification.

Advantages over CGI

The advantages of using servlets are their fast performance and ease of use combined with more power over traditional CGI (Common Gateway Interface). Traditional CGI scripts written in Java have a number of disadvantages when it comes to performance:
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When a HTTP request is made, a new process is created for each call of the CGI script. This overhead of process creation can be very system-intensive, especially when the script does relatively fast operations. Thus, process creation will take more time than CGI script execution. Java servlets solve this, as a servlet is not a separate process. Each request to be handled by a servlet is handled by a separate Java thread within the Web server process, omitting separate process forking by the HTTP daemon.

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Simultaneous CGI request causes the CGI script to be copied and loaded into memory as many times as there are requests. However, with servlets, there are the same amount of threads as requests, but there will only be one copy of the servlet class created in memory that stays there also between requests. Only a single instance answers all requests concurrently. This reduces memory usage and makes the management of persistent data easy. A servlet can be run by a servlet engine in a restrictive environment, called a sandbox. This is similar to an applet that runs in the sandbox of the Web browser. This makes a restrictive use of potentially harmful servlets possible.[2]

[edit] Life cycle of a servlet 1. The container calls the no-arg constructor. 2. The Web container calls the init() method. This method initializes the servlet and must be called before life of a servlet, the init() method is called only once. 3. After initialization, the servlet can service client requests. Each request is serviced in its own separate thread. The Web container calls the service() method of the servlet for every request. The service() method determines the kind of request being made and dispatches it to an appropriate method to handle the request. The developer of the servlet must provide an implementation for these methods. If a request for a method that is not implemented by the servlet is made, the method of the parent class is called, typically resulting in an error being returned to the requester. 4. Finally, the Web container calls the destroy() method that takes the servlet out of service. The destroy() method, like init(), is called only once in the lifecycle of a servlet.