Servlets

2
Servers
 A server is a computer that responds to requests from a client
 Typical requests: provide a web page, upload or download a file, send
email
 A server is also the software that responds to these requests; a
client could be the browser or other software making these
requests
 Typically, your little computer is the client, and someone else’s
big computer is the server
 However, any computer can be a server
 It is not unusual to have server software and client software running on the
same computer

3
Apache
 Apache is a very popular server
 66% of the web sites on the Internet use Apache
 Apache is:
 Full-featured and extensible
 Efficient
 Robust
 Secure (at least, more secure than other servers)
 Up to date with current standards
 Open source
 Free
 Why use anything else?

4
Ports
 A port is a connection between a server and a client
 Ports are identified by positive integers
 A port is a software notion, not a hardware notion, so there may be very
many of them
 A service is associated with a specific port
 Typical port numbers:

21—FTP, File Transfer Protocol

22—SSH, Secure Shell

25—SMTP, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol

53—DNS, Domain Name Service

80—HTTP, Hypertext Transfer Protocol

8080—HTTP (used for testing HTTP)

7648, 7649—CU-SeeMe

27960—Quake III
These are the ports
of most interest to us

5
Ports II
 My UPenn Web page is:
http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~matuszek
 But it is also:
http://www.cis.upenn.edu:80/~matuszek
 The http: at the beginning signifies a particular protocol
(communication language), the Hypertext Transfer Protocol
 The :80 specifies a port
 By default, the Web server listens to port 80
 The Web server could listen to any port it chose
 This could lead to problems if the port was in use by some other server
 For testing servlets, we typically have the server listen to port 8080
 In the second URL above, I explicitly sent my request to port 80
 If I had sent it to some other port, say, 99, my request would either go
unheard, or would (probably) not be understood

6
CGI Scripts
 CGI stands for “Common Gateway Interface”
Client sends a request to server
Server starts a CGI script
Script computes a result for server
and quits
Another client sends a request
client server
client
script
Server starts the CGI script again
Etc.
script
Server returns response to client

7
Servlets
 A servlet is like an applet, but on the server side
Client sends a request to server
Server starts a servlet
Servlet computes a result for
server and does not quit
Another client sends a request
client server
client
servlet
Server calls the servlet again
Etc.
Server returns response to client

8
Servlets vs. CGI scripts
 Advantages:
 Running a servlet doesn’t require creating a separate process
each time
 A servlet stays in memory, so it doesn’t have to be reloaded
each time
 There is only one instance handling multiple requests, not a
separate instance for every request
 Untrusted servlets can be run in a “sandbox”
 Disadvantage:
 Less choice of languages (CGI scripts can be in any language)

9
Tomcat
 Tomcat is the Servlet Engine than handles servlet requests
for Apache
 Tomcat is a “helper application” for Apache
 It’s best to think of Tomcat as a “servlet container”
 Apache can handle many types of web services
 Apache can be installed without Tomcat
 Tomcat can be installed without Apache
 It’s easier to install Tomcat standalone than as part of
Apache
 By itself, Tomcat can handle web pages, servlets, and JSP
 Apache and Tomcat are open source (and therefore free)

10
Servlets
 A servlet is any class that implements the
javax.servlet.Servlet interface
 In practice, most servlets extend the
javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet class
 Some servlets extend javax.servlet.GenericServlet instead
 Servlets, like applets, usually lack a main method, but
must implement or override certain other methods

11
Important servlet methods, I
 When a servlet is first started up, its init(ServletConfig config)
method is called
 init should perform any necessary initializations
 init is called only once, and does not need to be thread-safe
 Every servlet request results in a call to
service(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response)
 service calls another method depending on the type of service requested
 Usually you would override the called methods of interest, not service
itself
 service handles multiple simultaneous requests, so it and the methods it
calls must be thread safe
 When the servlet is shut down, destroy() is called
 destroy is called only once, but must be thread safe (because other threads
may still be running)

12
HTTP requests
 When a request is submitted from a Web page, it is almost always
a GET or a POST request
 The HTTP <form> tag has an attribute action, whose value can
be "get" or "post"
 The "get" action results in the form information being put after
a ? in the URL
 Example:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-
8&q=servlets
 The & separates the various parameters
 Only a limited amount of information can be sent this way
 "put" can send large amounts of information

13
Important servlet methods, II
 The service method dispatches the following kinds of requests:
DELETE, GET, HEAD, OPTIONS, POST, PUT, and TRACE
 A GET request is dispatched to the doGet(HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response) method
 A POST request is dispatched to the doPost(HttpServletRequest
request, HttpServletResponse response) method
 These are the two methods you will usually override
 doGet and doPost typically do the same thing, so usually you do the real
work in one, and have the other just call it
 public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response) {
doPost(request, response);
}

14
A “Hello World” servlet
(from the Tomcat installation documentation)
public class HelloServlet extends HttpServlet {
public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response)
throws ServletException, IOException {
response.setContentType("text/html");
PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
String docType =
"<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 " +
"Transitional//EN">n";
out.println(docType +
"<HTML>n" +
"<HEAD><TITLE>Hello</TITLE></HEAD>n" +
"<BODY BGCOLOR="#FDF5E6">n" +
"<H1>Hello World</H1>n" +
"</BODY></HTML>");
}
} Don’t worry, we’ll take this a little at a time!

15
The superclass
 public class HelloServlet extends HttpServlet {
 Every class must extend GenericServlet or a
subclass of GenericServlet
 GenericServlet is “protocol independent,” so you could
write a servlet to process any protocol
 In practice, you almost always want to respond to an
HTTP request, so you extend HttpServlet
 A subclass of HttpServlet must override at least one
method, usually one doGet, doPost, doPut,
doDelete, init and destroy, or getServletInfo

16
The doGet method
 public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response)
throws ServletException, IOException {
 This method services a GET request
 The method uses request to get the information that was sent to
it
 The method does not return a value; instead, it uses response to
get an I/O stream, and outputs its response
 Since the method does I/O, it can throw an IOException
 Any other type of exception should be encapsulated as a
ServletException
 The doPost method works exactly the same way

17
Parameters to doGet
 Input is from the HttpServletRequest parameter
 Our first example doesn’t get any input, so we’ll discuss this a
bit later
 Output is via the HttpServletResponse object, which we
have named response
 I/O in Java is very flexible but also quite complex, so this
object acts as an “assistant”

18
Using the HttpServletResponse
 The second parameter to doGet (or doPost) is
HttpServletResponse response
 Everything sent via the Web has a “MIME type”
 The first thing we must do with response is set the MIME type
of our reply: response.setContentType("text/html");
 This tells the client to interpret the page as HTML
 Because we will be outputting character data, we need a
PrintWriter, handily provided for us by the getWriter method
of response:
PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
 Now we’re ready to create the actual page to be returned

19
Using the PrintWriter
 From here on, it’s just a matter of using our PrintWriter,
named out, to produce the Web page
 First we create a header string:
String docType =
"<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 " +
"Transitional//EN">n";
 This line is technically required by the HTML spec
 Browsers mostly don’t care, but HTML validators do care
 Then use the println method of out one or more times
out.println(docType +
"<HTML>n" +
"<HEAD> ... </BODY></HTML>");
 And we’re done!

20
Input to a servlet
 A GET request supplies parameters in the form
URL ? name=value & name=value & name=value
 (Illegal spaces added to make it more legible)
 Actual spaces in the parameter values are encoded by + signs
 Other special characters are encoded in hex; for example, an
ampersand is represented by %26
 Parameter names can occur more than once, with
different values
 A POST request supplies parameters in the same syntax,
only it is in the “body” section of the request and is
therefore harder for the user to see

21
Getting the parameters
 Input parameters are retrieved via messages to the
HttpServletRequest object request
 Most of the interesting methods are inherited from the superinterface
ServletRequest
 public Enumeration getParameterNames()
 Returns an Enumeration of the parameter names
 If no parameters, returns an empty Enumeration
 public String getParameter(String name)
 Returns the value of the parameter name as a String
 If the parameter doesn’t exist, returns null
 If name has multiple values, only the first is returned
 public String[] getParameterValues(name)
 Returns an array of values of the parameter name
 If the parameter doesn’t exist, returns null

22
Enumeration review
 An Enumeration is almost the same as Iterator
 It’s an older class, and the names are longer
 Example use:
 Enumeration e = myVector.elements();
while (e.hasMoreElements()) {
System.out.println(e.nextElement());
}

23
Example of input parameters
public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response) {
... stuff omitted ...
out.println("<H1>Hello");
String names[] =
request.getParameterValues("name");
if (names != null)
for (int i = 0; i < names.length; i++)
out.println(" " + names[i]);
out.println("!");
}

24
Java review: Data from Strings
 All parameter values are retrieved as Strings
 Frequently these Strings represent numbers, and
you want the numeric value
 int n = new Integer(param).intValue();
 double d = new Double(param).doubleValue();
 byte b = new Byte(param).byteValue();

Similarly for short, float, and long

These can all throw a NumberFormatException, which is a
subclass of RuntimeException
 boolean p = new Boolean(param).booleanValue();
 But:
 char c = param.charAt(0);

25
What’s left?
 We’ve covered enough so far to write simple servlets,
but not enough to write useful servlets
 We still need to be able to:

Use configuration information

Authenticate users

Keep track of users during a session

Retain information across different sessions

Make sure our servlets are thread safe

Communicate between servlets
 But remember: The most difficult program in any language is
Hello World!

Servlets

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