Fast Track to Servlets & JSP Course

Topics covered on the 3 day Fast Track to Servlets & JSP course

Web Application Basics

• How the Web works, Thin Clients, TCP/IP
• HTTP overview, Brief HTML review
• Overview of J2EE, servlets & Web applications.
• Servlet Basics
• Lab: Create a web application with an HTML form which will eventually be processed by a servlet
• Lab: Create a simple servlet

Servlet API

• HTML Forms,
• HTTP: Request-response, headers, GET, POST
• Overview: How Servlets Work
• Servlet Lifecycle: init(), service(), destroy()
• Requests and responses
• Core Servlet API: GenericServlet, ServletRequest, and ServletResponse
• HTTP Servlets: HttpServletRequest , HttpServletResponse and HttpServlet
• Accessing Parameters
• Lab: Create and invoke a simple product search servlet and configure the web app to use it.
• Lab: Retrieve parameters

Additional Servlet Capabilities

• HTTP headers and MIME types
• RequestDispatcher: Including and forwarding
• Sharing data with the request object attributes
• Sharing data with ServletContext attributes
• Lab: Add search functionality with a utility class
• Lab: Redirect using RequestDispatcher

JavaServer Pages

• Basics and Overview
• JSP architecture
• JSP tags and JSP expressions
• Fixed Template Data
• Lifecycle of a JSP
• Model View Controller (MVC)
• Model 1 / Model 2 Architecture
• Data Sharing among servlets & JSP
• Object scopes or "buckets"
• Request, application, session and page scope
• Predefined JSP implicit objects (request, session, application, page)
• <jsp:useBean>
• <jsp:getProperty>, <jsp:setProperty>
• <jsp:include>, <jsp:forward>
• Lab: Create a simple JSP page, and forwarding to it
• Lab: Use JavaBeans in a JSP page
• Lab: Include a JSP using jsp:include

Using Custom Tags

• Custom tags overview
• Reducing JSP complexity
• Using custom tags to reduce complexity
• Tag Libraries
• Tag Library Descriptor (TLD)
• Loading a tag library in a web app
• The JSTL
• JSP Expression Language (EL)
• Using custom tags
• The c:url, c:param, c:forEach, c:out tags
• Lab: Use custom tags in JSP
• Lab: Use JSTL custom tags to iterate

More JSP Capabilities and Session Management

• Additional JSP Capabilities
• Exception handling and error pages
• Directives (page, include, others)
• Import declarations
• HTTP as a stateless protocol
• Hidden form fields
• Cookies: Overview , API, Using cookies
• Session overview: Cookies and session tracking
• HttpSession
• Putting data into a session object
• Retrieving data from a session object
• Using session data in servlets and JSPs
• URL Rewriting
• Multithreading considerations and data safety
• SingleThreadModel interface
• Lab: Create an error page
• Lab: Create a shopping cart & store it in a session
• Lab: Put items in the cart with a servlet, and display them in a JSP
• Lab: URL Rewriting

More JSTL

• Overview of JSTL libraries
• The JSTL Expression Language
• Expressions
• Type Coercion
• Operators
• String concatenation
• Implicit Objects
• The Core JSTL Library
• General Purpose: c:out, c:set, c:catch
• Conditional: c:if, c:choose,
• Overview of other capabilities
• Lab: Using c:if, c:choose, c:when and c:otherwise to customize output

Java Scriptlets in JSP

• Brief review of:
• Declarations
• Scriptlet overview
• Scriptlet syntax

Servlet 2.4 and JSP 2.0

• Servlet 2.4 Overview
• Deployment Descriptor changes
• Request Listeners
• JSP 2.0 Overview
• Expression Language (EL)
• EL in template text
• Function call mechanism
• Other improvements

Security

• J2EE Security Overview
• Declarative Security
• Web Authentication
• Programmatic Security

Additional Topics

• Servlet Filter overview
• Filtering examples, lifecycle, & filter chains
• Filter API, Modifying a request, Modifying a response
• Struts
• Advanced MVC – Struts overview
• Command and State patterns
• Struts View and Controller elements