Session 2.

1
J2EE Architecture

Session 2.2

Http Basics & Servlet

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Objectives:
What is J2EE?
Why J2EE?
J2EE Tire Architecture.
MVC Architecture.
Http Basics
Servlet

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What is J2EE?
Open and standard based platform for
developing, deploying and managing.
n-tier, Web-enabled, server-centric, and componentbased enterprise applications.

It includes Java Standard Edition(J2SE) plus most of the

other Java technologies including JavaMail, API for XML
Binding, Servlets, JSP (Java Server Pages), JMS (Java
Messaging Service), EJB (Enterprise Java Beans).

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Why J2EE?
We can use all the properties of Java Technology.Platform
Independence, Secure Code, Portability etc
Simplifies the complexity of a building n-tier application.
Standardizes an API between components and application
server container.
J2EE Application
framework services

Server

and

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Containers

provide

the

J2EE ARCHITECTURE
Single Tier (Mainframe-based)
Dumb terminals are directly
connected to mainframe

Centralized model (as opposed

distributed model)
Presentation, business logic, and
data access are intertwined in
one application
Eg. FOXPRO

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J2EE ARCHITECTURE (Cont.)

Single-Tier : Pros & Cons
Pros:
No client side management is required
Data consistency is easy to achieve
Cons:
Functionality (presentation, data model, business
logic) intertwined, difficult for updates and
maintenance and code reuse

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J2EE ARCHITECTURE (Cont.)

Two-Tier
Clients talking to back end

database
SQL queries sent, raw data
returned
Presentation, Business logic
and Data Model processing logic
in client application
Client Server systems
Ex:- Unix, mainframes
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J2EE ARCHITECTURE (Cont.)

Two-Tier : Pros & Cons
Pro:
DB product independence (compared to single-tier model)
Cons:
Presentation, data model, business logic are intertwined (at client side),
difficult for updates and maintenance
Data Model is tightly coupled to every client: If DB Schema changes, all
clients break
Updates have to be deployed to all clients making System maintenance
nightmare
DB connection for every client, thus difficult to scale
Raw data transferred to client for processing causes high network traffic
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J2EE ARCHITECTURE (Cont.)

Three-Tier (RPC based)
Thinner client: business & data
model separated from presentation
Business logic and data access
logic reside in middle tier server
while client handles presentation
Middle tier server is now required to
handle system services
Concurrency control, threading,
transaction, security, persistence,
multiplexing, performance, etc.

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J2EE ARCHITECTURE (Cont.)

Three-Tier (RPC based) : Pros &
Cons
Pro:
Business logic can change more flexibly than 2-tier model
Most business logic reside in the middle-tier server
Cons:
Complexity is introduced in the middle-tier server
Client and middle-tier server is more tightly coupled (than
the three-tier object based model)
Code is not really reusable (compared to object model
based)
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J2EE ARCHITECTURE (Cont.)

N-Tier
N-Tiered architecture: Various components that make up the
application are logically separated or distributed across network.
Client Server Server Database
Eg.. ATM Application

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J2EE ARCHITECTURE (Cont.)

Multi - Tier Architecture in J2EE
Front end (Client):
Viewed and manipulated by the users.
It can live in a Web browser or a standalone application.
Presents customized information to clients requirements.
Servlets and JSP is used as Front end development.

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J2EE ARCHITECTURE (Cont.)

Multi - Tier Architecture in J2EE

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J2EE ARCHITECTURE (Cont.)

Multi - Tier Architecture in J2EE
Middle:
Contains business logic Ex: Discounts.
It may contain two sub-tiers:
Web Tier It handles communication to client.
EJB Tier It manages business logic and access to
corporate data.
Backend (EIS):
Provides access to various corporate data stores (Databases,
E-Mail system, Legacy systems)
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MVC ARCHITECTURE
Need for MVC
J2EE designers were faced with a question of where to place the
code in a distributed environment.
Reasonable solution: To divide the code and put them closer to
their respective tier.
This approach reminds a popular, proven 20 year old application
design pattern called MVC.
MVC is a design pattern for building maintainable applications,
introduced by Xerox researchers.
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MVC ARCHITECTURE(Cont.)
What is MVC?
Technique aimed to make large applications flexible/simple during
development and maintenance.

It is a design pattern for partitioning of labor into three layers.

The "model" is the internal workings of the program (the algorithms), the
"view" is how the user sees the state of the model and the "controller" is
how the user changes the state or provides input.

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MVC ARCHITECTURE(Cont.)
What is MVC? (Cont.)
In this pattern, application flow is mediated by a central
controller that delegates requests to an appropriate handler.
Controller is the means by which users interacts with web
application. Controller is responsible for input to the model.
Ex: A pure GUI controller accepts input from the user and
instructs the model to create a view based on that input. If an
invalid input is sent to the controller from the view, model
informs controller to direct the view that error occurred and to
tell it to try again.
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MVC Example

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Servlet & HTTP Basics

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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 elses 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
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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?

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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:

21FTP, File Transfer Protocol

22SSH, Secure Shell
25SMTP, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
53DNS, Domain Name Service
80HTTP, Hypertext Transfer Protocol These are the ports
of most interest to us
8080HTTP (used for testing HTTP)
7648, 7649CU-SeeMe
27960Quake III
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Common Gateway Interface (CGI)

CGI stands for Common Gateway
Interface
CGI is a standard programming interface
to Web servers that allows building
dynamic and interactive Web sites
CGI is not a programming language.
It is just a set of standards (protocols)
The standards specify how Web-applications
can be executed on the server-side
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Dynamic Pages

Request service

Return dynamically
generated HTML file
<HEADER>
<BODY
</BODY>

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Run CGI program

print $result

What is java servlet ?

A servlet is a small Java program that runs within
a Web server. Servlets receive and respond to
requests from Web clients, usually across HTTP,
the Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. Servlet is an
opposite of applet as a server-side applet. Applet
is an application running on client while servlet is
running on server.
Request

Servlet

Client

Server

Response
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Servlets vs. CGI

Servlet Java-based CGI
Executed by servlets container

Golden goals: "performance, flexibility,

portability, simplicity and security"
Faster and thinner

No fork-process execution like Perl

No need to initialize for each request
Only lightweight thread context switching
Built-in multithreading
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Servlets vs. CGI

Multi-threaded execution allows to:
share data across successive requests
share data between concurrent requests
use hidden fields, cookies, or sessions

Java supports write once, run anywhere

paradigm
Easier than unportable Perl

Java provides enhanced security

Supports all HTTP request methods
GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, and others
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Introduction request-response
model
Request-response model.
HTTP
Request

request
Server
<html>
<head>
<html>
<body>
<head>

<body>

Client
response
HTTP
HTML

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Introduction what is a request

and response
HTTP Request

HTTP Response

Key elements of a request

stream:

Key elements of a response

stream:

HTTP method (action to be

performed).

A status code (for whether

the request was successful).

The page to access (a URL).

Content-type (text, picture,

html, etc).

Form parameters.
The content ( the actual
content).

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Introduction What is a Servlet

Where does Servlet come into the picture?
I can serve only
static HTML
pages
Web Server
Application

Helper
Application

Not a
problem. I
can handle
dynamic
requests.

Web Server machine

The Helper Application is nothing but a SERVLET

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Servlet Architecture -Web

Container
What is a Web Container?
request
GET.
..

GET.
..

GET.
..

Web
Server

Web
Container

Client

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Servlet

Servlet Architecture Web

Container
How does the Container handle a request?

Http request

Web
Container

Servlet

request
response

Thread

Web
Server

Client

response

<Html>
<Body>
.
</Body>
</Html>

Service()
doGet()

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Servlet Architecture Web

Container
The CONTAINER

What is the role of Web Container ?

Communication Support

S2
S1

Lifecycle Management

JSP1
Multi-threading support

S3

Security
JSP Support

S4

The container can contain multiple Servlets & JSPs within it

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Servlet Architecture Deployment

Descriptor

How does the Container know which Servlet the client has
requested for?
<web-app>

A Servlet can have 3 names

Client known URL name
Deployer known secret
internal name
Actual file name

<servlet>
<servlet-name>LoginServ</servlet-nam
<servlet-class>com.Login</servlet-cla
</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>LoginServ</servlet-nam
<url-pattern>/Logon</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
..
..
</web-app>

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Web.xml

Servlet Lifecycle

The Servlet lifecycle is simple, there is only one main state

Initialized.
Does not exist

constructor()

destroy()

init()

Initialized
Service()
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Servlet Lifecycle - Hierarchy

Interface

Abstract class

Servlet

GenericServlet

Abstract class

HttpServlet

Concrete class

Your Servlet

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If not overridden, implements init()

method from the Servlet interface,

If not overridden, implements service()

method.

We implement the HTTP methods

here.

Understanding Servlet API

Packages in the Java Servlet API 2.1

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http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/2.1/servlet-2.1.pdf

Understanding Servlet API

(Contd.)

Packages in the Java Servlet API 2.1

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http://java.sun.com/products/servlet/2.1/servlet-2.1.pdf

Servlet Lifecycle 3 big moments

When is it called

What its for

The container
calls the init()
before the servlet
can service any
client requests.

To initialize your
servlet before
handling any
client requests.

service()

When a new
request for that
servlet comes in.

To determine
which HTTP
No. Very unlikely
method should be
called.

doGet() or
doPost()

The service()
To handle the
method invokes it business logic.
based on the HTTP
method from the
request.

init()

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Do you override
it

Possibly

Always

Using the PrintWriter

From here on, its 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 dont 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 were done!

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A Hello World servlet

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>");
}
Dont worry, well take this a little at a time!
}
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Request and Response GET v/s

POST

The HTTP request method determines whether doGet() or

doPost() runs.
GET (doGet())

POST (doPost())

The request contains only the

request line and HTTP header.

Along with request line

and header it also contains
HTTP body.

Parameter
passing

The form elements are passed

to the server by appending at
the end of the URL.

The form elements are

passed in the body of the
HTTP request.

Size

The parameter data is limited

(the limit depends on the
container)

Can send huge amount of

data to the server.

Idempotency

GET is Idempotent

POST is not idempotent

Usage

Generally used to fetch some

information from the host.

Generally used to process

the sent data.

HTTP Request

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Request and Response The

response
Request

Can the Servlet

Serve the request?

No

Does the Servlet know

Who can serve?

No

Yes
Yes

Send resource

Send Redirect
Request Dispatcher
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Error page

Being a Web Container Servlet

Config and Context
Servlet Context

Servlet 1

Servlet Config

Servlet 3

Servlet 2

Servlet Config

Servlet Config
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JSP 1

Servlet Config

Being a Web Container init

parameters

What are init parameters?

Difference between Servlet Context and Config Init parameters
Context Init Parameters

Servlet Init Parameters

Scope is Web Container

Specific to Servlet or JSP

Servlet code

getServletContext()

getServletConfig()

Deployment
Descriptor

Within the <web-app> element Within the <servlet> element

but not within a specific
for each specific servlet
<servlet> element

Scope

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Being a Web Container Attributes

What exactly, is an attribute?

Difference between Attributes and parameters

Types

Attributes

Parameters

Context
Request
Session

Context
Request
Servlet Init
We cannot set Init
parameters.

Method to set

setAttribute(String, Object)

Return type

Object

String

getAttribute(String)

getInitParameter
(String)

Method to get

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Q&A

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