The Java EE 5 Tutorial

The Example JSP Document

This chapter uses the Duke’s Bookstore application, version bookstore5, and the books application to demonstrate how to write JSP pages in XML syntax. The JSP pages of the bookstore5 application use the JSTL XML tags (see XML Tag Library) to manipulate the book data from an XML stream. The books application contains the JSP document books.jspx, which accesses the book data from the database and converts it into the XML stream. The bookstore5 application accesses this XML stream to get the book data.

These applications show how easy it is to generate XML data and stream it between web applications. The books application can be considered the application hosted by the book warehouse’s server. The bookstore5 application can be considered the application hosted by the book retailer’s server. In this way, the customer of the bookstore web site sees the list of books currently available, according to the warehouse’s database.

The source for the Duke’s Bookstore application is located in the tut-install/javaeetutorial5/examples/web/bookstore5/ directory, which is created when you unzip the tutorial bundle (see Chapter 2, Using the Tutorial Examples).

To deploy the books application using NetBeans IDE, follow these steps:

1. Perform all the operations described in Accessing Databases from Web Applications.

2. In NetBeans IDE, select File→Open Project.

3. In the Open Project dialog, navigate to:

   tut-install/javaeetutorial5/examples/web/

4. Select the books folder.

5. Select the Open as Main Project check box and the Open Required Projects check box.

6. Click Open Project.

7. In the Projects tab, right-click the books project, and select Undeploy and Deploy.

To deploy the books application using the Ant utility, follow these steps:

1. In a terminal window, go to tut-install/javaeetutorial5/examples/web/books/.

2. Type ant build. This target will spawn any necessary compilations, copy files to the tut-install/javaeetutorial5/examples/web/books/build/ directory, build a WAR file, and copy the WAR file to the tut-install/javaeetutorial5/examples/web/books/dist/ directory.

3. To deploy the application, type ant deploy.

To deploy and run the bookstore5 application using NetBeans IDE, follow these steps:

1. Perform all the operations described in Accessing Databases from Web Applications.

2. In NetBeans IDE, select File→Open Project.

3. In the Open Project dialog, navigate to:

   tut-install/javaeetutorial5/examples/web/

4. Select the bookstore5 folder.

5. Select the Open as Main Project check box and the Open Required Projects check box.

6. Click Open Project.

7. In the Projects tab, right-click the bookstore5 project, and select Undeploy and Deploy.

8. To run the applications, open the bookstore URL http://localhost:8080/bookstore5/books/bookstore.

To deploy and run the application using Ant, follow these steps:

1. In a terminal window, go to tut-install/javaeetutorial5/examples/web/bookstore5/.

2. Type ant. This command will spawn any necessary compilations, copy files to the tut-install/javaeetutorial5/examples/web/bookstore5/build/ directory, and create a WAR file and copy it to the tut-install/javaeetutorial5/examples/web/bookstore5/dist/ directory.

3. Start the Application Server.

4. Perform all the operations described in Creating a Data Source in the Application Server.

5. To deploy the example, type ant deploy. The deploy target outputs a URL for running the application. Ignore this URL, and instead use the one shown in the next step.

6. To run the applications, open the bookstore URL http://localhost:8080/bookstore5/books/bookstore.

To learn how to configure the bookstore5 example, refer to the web.xml file, which includes the following configurations:

• A display-name element that specifies the name that tools use to identify the application.

• A context-param element that identifies the context path to the XML stream.

• A context-param element that specifies the JSTL resource bundle base name.

• A set of servlet elements that identify the JSP files in the application.

• A set of servlet-mapping elements that identify aliases to the JSP pages identified by the servlet elements.

• Nested inside a jsp-config element are two jsp-property-group elements, which define the preludes and coda to be included in each page. See Setting JavaBeans Component Properties for more information.

To learn how to configure the books example, refer to the web.xml file, which includes the following configurations:

• A display-name element that specifies the name that tools use to identify the application.

• A listener element that identifies the ContextListener class used to create and remove the database access.

• A servlet element that identifies the JSP page.

• Nested inside a jsp-config element is a jsp-property-group element, which identifies the JSP page as an XML document. See Identifying the JSP Document to the Container for more information.