Using Servlets

GlassFish Server supports the Java Servlet Specification version 3.0.

To develop servlets, use the Java Servlet API. For information about using the Java Servlet API, see the documentation at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javaee/servlet/index.html.

The GlassFish Server provides the wscompile and wsdeploy tools to help you implement a web service endpoint as a servlet. For more information about these tools, see the Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1-3.1.1 Reference Manual.

This section describes how to create effective servlets to control application interactions running on a GlassFish Server, including standard-based servlets. In addition, this section describes the GlassFish Server features to use to augment the standards.

The following topics are addressed here:

• Caching Servlet Results

• About the Servlet Engine

Caching Servlet Results

The GlassFish Server can cache the results of invoking a servlet, a JSP, or any URL pattern to make subsequent invocations of the same servlet, JSP, or URL pattern faster. The GlassFish Server caches the request results for a specific amount of time. In this way, if another data call occurs, the GlassFish Server can return the cached data instead of performing the operation again. For example, if your servlet returns a stock quote that updates every 5 minutes, you set the cache to expire after 300 seconds.

Whether to cache results and how to cache them depends on the data involved. For example, it makes no sense to cache the results of a quiz submission, because the input to the servlet is different each time. However, it makes sense to cache a high level report showing demographic data taken from quiz results that is updated once an hour.

To define how a GlassFish Server web application handles response caching, you edit specific fields in the glassfish-web.xml file.

For Javadoc tool pages relevant to caching servlet results, go to http://glassfish.java.net/nonav/docs/v3/api/ and click on the com.sun.appserv.web.cache package.

For information about JSP caching, see JSP Caching.

The following topics are addressed here:

• Caching Features

• Default Cache Configuration

• Caching Example

• The CacheKeyGenerator Interface

Caching Features

The GlassFish Server has the following web application response caching capabilities:

• Caching is configurable based on the servlet name or the URI.

• When caching is based on the URI, this includes user specified parameters in the query string. For example, a response from /garden/catalog?category=roses is different from a response from /garden/catalog?category=lilies. These responses are stored under different keys in the cache.

• Cache size, entry timeout, and other caching behaviors are configurable.

• Entry timeout is measured from the time an entry is created or refreshed. To override this timeout for an individual cache mapping, specify the cache-mapping subelement timeout.

• To determine caching criteria programmatically, write a class that implements the com.sun.appserv.web.cache.CacheHelper interface. For example, if only a servlet knows when a back end data source was last modified, you can write a helper class to retrieve the last modified timestamp from the data source and decide whether to cache the response based on that timestamp.

• To determine cache key generation programmatically, write a class that implements the com.sun.appserv.web.cache.CacheKeyGenerator interface. See The CacheKeyGenerator Interface.

• All non-ASCII request parameter values specified in cache key elements must be URL encoded. The caching subsystem attempts to match the raw parameter values in the request query string.

• Since newly updated classes impact what gets cached, the web container clears the cache during dynamic deployment or reloading of classes.

• The following HttpServletRequest request attributes are exposed.

  • com.sun.appserv.web.cachedServletName, the cached servlet target

  • com.sun.appserv.web.cachedURLPattern, the URL pattern being cached

• Results produced by resources that are the target of a RequestDispatcher.include() or RequestDispatcher.forward() call are cached if caching has been enabled for those resources. For details, see cache-mapping in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1 Application Deployment Guide and dispatcher in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1 Application Deployment Guide. These are elements in the glassfish-web.xml file.

Default Cache Configuration

If you enable caching but do not provide any special configuration for a servlet or JSP, the default cache configuration is as follows:

• The default cache timeout is 30 seconds.

• Only the HTTP GET method is eligible for caching.

• HTTP requests with cookies or sessions automatically disable caching.

• No special consideration is given to Pragma:, Cache-control:, or Vary: headers.

• The default key consists of the Servlet Path (minus pathInfo and the query string).

• A “least recently used” list is maintained to evict cache entries if the maximum cache size is exceeded.

• Key generation concatenates the servlet path with key field values, if any are specified.

• Results produced by resources that are the target of a RequestDispatcher.include() or RequestDispatcher.forward() call are never cached.

Caching Example

Here is an example cache element in the glassfish-web.xml file:

<cache max-capacity="8192" timeout="60">
<cache-helper name="myHelper" class-name="MyCacheHelper"/>
<cache-mapping>
    <servlet-name>myservlet</servlet-name>
    <timeout name="timefield">120</timeout>
    <http-method>GET</http-method>
    <http-method>POST</http-method>
</cache-mapping>
<cache-mapping>
    <url-pattern> /catalog/* </url-pattern>
    <!-- cache the best selling category; cache the responses to
       -- this resource only when the given parameters exist. Cache
       -- only when the catalog parameter has 'lilies' or 'roses'
       -- but no other catalog varieties:
      -- /orchard/catalog?best&category='lilies'
      -- /orchard/catalog?best&category='roses'
      -- but not the result of
       -- /orchard/catalog?best&category='wild'
    -->
    <constraint-field name='best' scope='request.parameter'/>
    <constraint-field name='category' scope='request.parameter'>
        <value> roses </value>
        <value> lilies </value>
    </constraint-field>
     <!-- Specify that a particular field is of given range but the
       -- field doesn't need to be present in all the requests -->
    <constraint-field name='SKUnum' scope='request.parameter'>
        <value match-expr='in-range'> 1000 - 2000 </value>
    </constraint-field>
    <!-- cache when the category matches with any value other than
       -- a specific value -->
    <constraint-field name="category" scope="request.parameter>
        <value match-expr="equals" cache-on-match-failure="true">
       bogus
        </value>
    </constraint-field>
</cache-mapping>
<cache-mapping>
    <servlet-name> InfoServlet </servlet-name>
    <cache-helper-ref>myHelper</cache-helper-ref>
</cache-mapping>
</cache>

For more information about the glassfish-web.xml caching settings, see cache in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1 Application Deployment Guide.

The CacheKeyGenerator Interface

The built-in default CacheHelper implementation allows web applications to customize the key generation. An application component (in a servlet or JSP) can set up a custom CacheKeyGenerator implementation as an attribute in the ServletContext.

The name of the context attribute is configurable as the value of the cacheKeyGeneratorAttrName property in the default-helper element of the glassfish-web.xml deployment descriptor. For more information, see default-helper in Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1 Application Deployment Guide.

About the Servlet Engine

Servlets exist in and are managed by the servlet engine in the GlassFish Server. The servlet engine is an internal object that handles all servlet meta functions. These functions include instantiation, initialization, destruction, access from other components, and configuration management.

The following topics are addressed here:

• Instantiating and Removing Servlets

• Request Handling

Instantiating and Removing Servlets

After the servlet engine instantiates the servlet, the servlet engine calls the servlet’s init method to perform any necessary initialization. You can override this method to perform an initialization function for the servlet’s life, such as initializing a counter.

When a servlet is removed from service, the servlet engine calls the destroy method in the servlet so that the servlet can perform any final tasks and deallocate resources. You can override this method to write log messages or clean up any lingering connections that won’t be caught in garbage collection.

Request Handling

When a request is made, the GlassFish Server hands the incoming data to the servlet engine. The servlet engine processes the request’s input data, such as form data, cookies, session information, and URL name-value pairs, into an HttpServletRequest request object type.

The servlet engine also creates an HttpServletResponse response object type. The engine then passes both as parameters to the servlet’s service method.

In an HTTP servlet, the default service method routes requests to another method based on the HTTP transfer method: POST, GET, DELETE, HEAD, OPTIONS, PUT, or TRACE. For example, HTTP POST requests are sent to the doPost method, HTTP GET requests are sent to the doGet method, and so on. This enables the servlet to process request data differently, depending on which transfer method is used. Since the routing takes place in the service method, you generally do not override service in an HTTP servlet. Instead, override doGet, doPost, and so on, depending on the request type you expect.

To perform the tasks to answer a request, override the service method for generic servlets, and the doGet or doPost methods for HTTP servlets. Very often, this means accessing EJB components to perform business transactions, then collating the information in the request object or in a JDBC ResultSet object.