MVC for Servlets

Oct 24, 2010

 MVC
 One of the most common Design Patterns is Model-
View-Controller (MVC)
 The model does all the computational work
 It is input/output free
 All communication with the model is via methods
 The controller tells the model what to do
 User input goes to the controller
 The view shows results; it is a “window” into the model
 The view can get results from the controller, or
 The view can get results directly from the model

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 MVC for servlets
 The model, as usual, does all the computational work,
and no I/O
 The model can consist of multiple classes
 The servlet class (the one that extends HttpServlet)
acts as the controller
 The servlet gives any relevant information from the user
request to the model
 The servlet takes the results and passes them on to the view
 The view—that is, the HTML page that is returned to
the user—is frequently created by JSP

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 Web applications
 A web application typically consists of:
 Some (Java) class, acting as the controller, that extends
HttpServlet
 The model code (also Java)
 The view code (ultimately Java, but we write it as JSP)
 Plus, of course, the web.xml file
 All these parts need to communicate with one another
 That’s what the rest of this lecture is (mostly) about

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web.xml → servlet

Oct 24, 2010

 Servlet life-cycle methods
 public void init()
 Called after the servlet is constructed but before the servlet is placed into
service
 As the name implies, a good place to do initializations
 public void service(ServletRequest request,
ServletResponse response)
 Called when a servlet request is made
 The HttpServlet service method will dispatch the request to doGet,
doPost, or one of the other service methods
 public void destroy()
 Called when a servlet is terminated
 Can be used to clean up any resources (files, databases, threads, etc.)

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 ServletConfig
 You can override public void init()
 Servlet has the methods:
 public ServletConfig getServletConfig()
 You will probably use this if you override init()

 public String getServletInfo()

 By default, returns an empty string; override to make it useful

 The main purpose of ServletConfig is to provide initialization

information to the servlet
 ServletConfig has these methods:

public java.lang.String getServletName()
 public ServletContext getServletContext()
 public Enumeration getInitParameterNames()
 public String getInitParameter(String name)
 Our interest will be in getting initialization parameters
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 Servlet init parameters
 Where does a servlet get its initialization information?
 From the web.xml file, of course!

 Inside <servlet>:
 <init-param>
<param-name>myName</param-name>
<param-value>myValue</param-value>
</init-param>

 In the servlet code:

 String myValue = getServletConfig().getInitParameter("myName");

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web.xml → entire web application

Oct 24, 2010

 Multiple servlets
 A web application can consist of multiple servlets
 We just saw how to send configuration information to a
single servlet
 Context init parameters can send configuration
information to all servlets in a web application
 Not inside a particular <servlet> tag:
 <context-param>
<param-name>myName</param-name>
<param-value>myValue</param-value>
</context-param>
 In any servlet:
 String myValue =
getServletContext().getInitParameter("myName");

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 Servlet vs. context init parameters
 Servlet init parameters are:  Context init parameters are:
 Defined within a <servlet> tag  Defined outside all <servlet> tags
 Written within a
 Written within an <context-param> tag
<init-param> tag
 Retrieved from a ServletContext
object, which you get by calling
 Retrieved from a
getServletContext()
ServletConfig object, which
you get by calling  Read from the ServletContext
getServletConfig()
object by calling
getInitParameter(name)
 Read from the ServletConfig
object by calling
getInitParameter(name)

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 Public ServletContext methods
 String getInitParameter(String name)
 Enumeration getInitParameterNames()
 Object getAttribute(String name)
 Enumeration getAttributeNames()
 void setAttribute(String name, Object object)
 void removeAttribute(String name)
 String getRealPath(String path)
 RequestDispatcher getRequestDispatcher(String path)

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servlet → JSP

Oct 24, 2010

 The ServletRequest object
 You’ve seen these methods of the ServletRequest
object:
 public Enumeration getParameterNames()
 public String getParameter(String name)
 public String[] getParameterValues(String name)
 ServletRequest also has these methods:
 public Enumeration getAttributeNames()
 public Object getAttribute(String name)
 public void setAttribute(String name, Object object)
 You can use attributes to send information to the JSP

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 Dispatching to the JSP
 request.setAttribute(name, object)
 Notice that we put the information on the request
 RequestDispatcher view =
request.getRequestDispatcher("result.jsp");
 We ask the request object for a dispatcher
 We supply, as a String, a path to the JSP file
 If the path begins with a slash, it is relative to the current context root
 Otherwise, it is relative to the servlet location
 view.forward(request, response);
 Having added the result information to the HttpRequest
object, we forward the whole thing to the JSP
 The JSP does the rest—it will send out the HTML page

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 Aside: redirect vs. forward
 The previous slide showed how a servlet could forward
a request to JSP (or to another servlet)
 This is all done on the server side
 response.sendRedirect(URL) sends a response back
to the browser that says, in effect, “I can’t handle this
request; you should go to this URL instead.”
 You cannot use this method if you have already written
something to the response
 The URL can be relative to the location of this servlet

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Attributes

Oct 24, 2010

 Parameters are not attributes
 You can get parameters from the Deployment Descriptor:
 getServletConfig().getInitParameter(name);
 getServletContext().getInitParameter(name);
 You cannot set these parameters
 You can get request parameters
 request.getParameter(String name)
 Parameter values are always Strings
 Attribute values are always Objects
 When you get an attribute, you have to cast it to the type you want

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 Attribute scopes
 Servlets can access three scopes:
 Application scope

All servlets in the web application have access
 Attributes are stored in the ServletContext object
 Available for the lifetime of the servlet
 Session scope
 Available to servlets that have access to this specific session
 Attributes are stored in the HttpSession object
 Available for the life of the session
 Request scope
 Available to servlets that have access to this specific request
 Attributes are stored in the ServletRequest object
 Available for the life of the request (until your doGet or doPost method
completes)

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 Attribute methods
 ServletContext objects, ServletRequest objects, and
HttpSession objects all have the following methods:

 Object getAttribute(String name)

 void setAttribute(String name, Object object)

 void removeAttribute(String name)

 Enumeration getAttributeNames()

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 Thread safety
 Thread problems can occur when:
 One Thread is writing to (modifying) an object at the same time another
Thread is reading it
 Two (or more) Threads are trying to write to the same object at the same
time
 Thread problems cannot (in general) be detected by the Java
runtime system
 Instead, thread problems cause random, mysterious, non-replicable
corruption of data
 There are simple steps that you can take to avoid many threading
problems
 However, threading is very error-prone and can be extremely difficult to
ensure that you have it right

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 Thread safety in servlets
 Tomcat starts a new Thread for every new request
 Each request, and therefore each Thread, has its own request
and response objects
 Therefore, these are inherently Thread-safe
 Local variables (including parameters) of your service methods are also
thread-safe
 Instance variables are not thread-safe
 You don’t have multiple servlet objects—you have multiple Threads using the
same servlet object
 Application (context) scope is shared by all servlets
 Therefore, context attributes are inherently Thread-unsafe
 Session attributes are not completely Thread-safe
 It is possible to have multiple simultaneous requests from the same session

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 Thread safety in class assignments
 In reality, the servlets you write for this course are not going to
service thousands of requests per second
 You (and my TA) will enter a few requests manually, with billions of
nanoseconds in between
 You are not going to have threading problems
 However...
 I’m trying to teach “real world” programming
 Therefore, you have to pretend that thread safety is a real issue in your
programming assignments
 If I had lots of spare time (which I don’t!), I could write a program to send
your servlet thousands of requests per second
 Even if I did that, my program could not reliably catch problems
 Bottom line: Try your best to make your servlets thread-safe,
even though we can’t test them for thread safety

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 Protecting context attributes
 To protect context attributes, synchronize on the ServletContext
object
 Example (from Head First Servlets & JSP):

synchronized(getServletContext()) {
getServletContext().setAttribute("foo", "22");
getServletContext().setAttribute("bar", "42");

out.println(getServletContext().getAttribute("foo"));
out.println(getServletContext().getAttribute("bar"));
}
 This will protect you from any other code that also synchronizes
on the ServletContext
 It will not protect you from code that doesn’t so synchronize
 But this is the best we can do

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 Protecting session attributes
 To protect session attributes, synchronize on the HttpSession
object
 Example (from Head First Servlets & JSP):

HttpSession session = request.getSession();

synchronized(session) {
session.setAttribute("foo", "22");
session.setAttribute("bar", "42");

out.println(session.getAttribute("foo"));
out.println(session.getAttribute("bar"));
}
 This will protect you from any other code that also synchronizes
on the HttpSession

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 Getting init parameters in JSP
 You can get servlet and context init parameters in your JSP
 Step 1: Specify in your DD that you want them:
 <servlet>
<servlet-name>SomeServletName</servlet-name>
<jsp-file>/UseServletInit.jsp</jsp-file>
<init-param> ... </init-param>
<init-param> ... </init-param>
...
</servlet>
 Step 2: Override jspInit() (must be done in a JSP declaration):
 <%!
public void jspInit() {
// use getServletConfig() and getServletContext() as usual
}
%>

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 PageContext
 In JSP, pageContext is an implicit object (like request and response) of
type PageContext
 PageContext has these methods (among others):
 Object getAttribute(String name) // uses page scope
 Object getAttribute(String name, int scope)
 Enumeration getAttributeNamesInScope(int scope)
 Object findAttribute(String name)
 Searches in the order: page context, request scope, session scope, application scope
 void setAttribute(String name, Object value)
 void setAttribute(String name, Object value, int scope)
 Where scope can be one of PageContext.APPLICATION_SCOPE,
PageContext.PAGE_SCOPE, PageContext.REQUEST_SCOPE, or
PageContext.SESSION_SCOPE
 So you can access a lot of information from a PageContext object!

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The End

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