Java(TM) Servlet Programming

Java(TM) Servlet ProgrammingSearch this book
Previous: About the ExamplesPrefaceNext: Conventions Used in This Book
SPACE

Organization

This book consists of 13 chapters and 5 appendices, as follows:

Chapter 1, Introduction

Explains the role and advantage of Java servlets in web application development.

Chapter 2, HTTP Servlet Basics

Provides a quick introduction to the things an HTTP servlet can do: page generation, server-side includes, servlet chaining, and JavaServer Pages.

Chapter 3, The Servlet Life Cycle

Explains the details of how and when a servlet is loaded, how and when it is executed, how threads are managed, and how to handle the synchronization issues in a multithreaded system. Persistent state capabilities are also covered.

Chapter 4, Retrieving Information

Introduces the most common methods a servlet uses to receive informationSPACE-- about the client, the server, the client's request, and itself.

Chapter 5, Sending HTML Information

Describes how a servlet can generate HTML, return errors and other status codes, redirect requests, write data to the server log, and send custom HTTP header information.

Chapter 6, Sending Multimedia Content

Looks at some of the interesting things a servlet can return: dynamically generated images, compressed content, and multipart responses.

Chapter 7, Session Tracking

Shows how to build a sense of state on top of the stateless HTTP protocol. The first half of the chapter demonstrates the traditional session-tracking techniques used by CGI developers; the second half shows how to use the built-in support for session tracking in the Servlet API.

Chapter 8, Security

Explains the security issues involved with distributed computing and demonstrates how to maintain security with servlets.

Chapter 9, Database Connectivity

Shows how servlets can be used for high-performance web-database connectivity.

Chapter 10, Applet-Servlet Communication

Describes how servlets can be of use to applet developers who need to communicate with the server.

Chapter 11, Interservlet Communication

Discusses why servlets need to communicate with each other and how it can be accomplished.

Chapter 12, Internationalization

Shows how a servlet can generate multilingual content.

Chapter 13, Odds and Ends

Presents a junk drawer full of useful servlet examples and tips that don't really belong anywhere else.

Appendix A, Servlet API Quick Reference

Contains a full description of the classes, methods, and variables in the javax.servlet package.

Appendix B, HTTP Servlet API Quick Reference

Contains a full description of the classes, methods, and variables in the javax.servlet.http package.

Appendix C, HTTP Status Codes

Lists the status codes specified by HTTP, along with the mnemonic constants used by servlets.

Appendix D, Character Entities

Lists the character entities defined in HTML, along with their equivalent Unicode escape values.

Appendix E, Charsets

Lists the suggested charsets servlets may use to generate content in several different languages.

Please feel free to read the chapters of this book in whatever order you like. Reading straight through from front to back ensures that you won't encounter any surprises, as efforts have been taken to avoid forward references. If you want to skip around, however, you can do so easily enough, especially after Chapter 5SPACE-- the rest of the chapters all tend to stand alone. One last suggestion: read the "Debugging" section of Chapter 13 if at any time you find a piece of code that doesn't work as expected.


Previous: About the ExamplesJava(TM) Servlet ProgrammingNext: Conventions Used in This Book
About the ExamplesBook IndexConventions Used in This Book

Copyright © 2001 O'Reilly & Associates. All rights reserved.