How Tomcat Works [Paperback]

Budi Kurniawan (Author), Paul Deck (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2004

How Tomcat Works is the only book that explains the internal workings of Tomcat, the open source project used by millions of Java developers. Unlike other Tomcat titles, it is unique because it does not simply covers the configuration or servlet development with Tomcat. Rather, this book is meant for advanced readers interested in writing their own Tomcat modules or in understanding more beyond servlet/JSP programming.
The authors of this book have cracked open Tomcat 4 and 5 and revealed the internal workings of each component. Upon understanding the contents of this book, you will be able to develop your own Tomcat components or extend the existing ones.

In particular, this book explains:
- How to develop Java web servers
- Whether or not more Tomcat creates more than one instance for each servlet
- How Tomcat runs a servlet that implements the SingleThreadModel interface
- Why you cannot change the value of request parameters.
- The two main modules of a servlet container: connector and container
- How to build your own connector or extend the existing ones
- The four types of containers: engine, host, context, wrapper
- How Tomcat manages sessions and how to extend the session manager in a distributed environment.
- The class loader and how to create custom loaders
- How Tomcat implements security and basic/form-based/digest authentication
- How realms and login configuration work.
- How Tomcat processes the configuration file (server.xml) and converts the XML elements to Java objects using Digester
- Tomcat's shutdown hook
- JMX, Apache's Commons Modeler, and Tomcat JMX manageable resources

Editorial Reviews

Review

It's really excellent. I mean, I can't put the thing down! -- Richard Monson-Haefel, award-winning author (http://weblogs.java.net/pub/wlg/1372)

About the Author

Budi Kurniawan is an IT consultant specializing in Internet and object-oriented programming. He is the author of Java for the Web with Servlets, JSP, and EJB, and the creator of the Brainysoftware.com File Upload Bean.

Product Details

• Paperback: 458 pages
• Publisher: BrainySoftware.com (April 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 097521280X
• ISBN-13: 978-0975212806
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,628,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I now understand Tomcat's internals, June 10, 2004

By 

Xing Yan (Perth, Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How Tomcat Works (Paperback)

I became interested after reading Richard Monson-Haefel's praising this book in his blog (http://weblogs.java.net/pub/wlg/1372). After reading the
six free chapters from the publisher's site (www.brainysoftware.com), I decided to buy. This is a truly amazing book that covers such an advanced topic in such a simple language. I feel I do understand the internals of Tomcat now. The first Tomcat component you can build after reading this book is as simple as 20 lines or so, as demonstrated in the publisher's site. Supporting technologies, such as shutdown hook, Digester, JMX, are also well explained so that you will be really prepared to wade through complex code.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not for the squeemish..., May 24, 2004

By 

Mike Harley (Woodbury, MN USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How Tomcat Works (Paperback)

I bought Budi's newest book because I liked the style of his earlier book on JavaServer Faces. He has an ability that is rare for most technical authors...He can make a very complex topic understandable.

Although Tomcat is pretty easy to set up and use as a developer, to really understand the internals of the server one must wade through thousands of lines of code and even then it can be a daunting task. Furthermore, understanding the "how" is only half the battle. To really gain an understanding of the server, one must understand "why" the Jakarta folks did things the way they did.

Budi (and Paul Deck) did a great job of not just giving a code review of the server, but also describing the reasons why the server is constructed the way it is.

Having written a few Tomcat Components the hard way - trial and error - I can say the insights given in this book have helped a great deal.

But, as I say in the title, this book is not for the squeemish. There is a sizable amount of fairly complex code. To really understand the point of the book, the reader must be VERY familiar with the Java language, Java Web Applications, TCP/IP, and be willing to ponder a code listing for a while to really understand it. In other words, this is not what I would call a "passive read".

If you have the basic understanding necessary, this book will shed a great deal of light on one of the darker corners of server-side Java development.

This is great read for anybody wanting to really understand the internals of Tomcat.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lessons Learned, March 16, 2005

By 

Rayman (Atlanta) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How Tomcat Works (Paperback)

THis is a Tomcat book that lets you pick the brightest brains in the industry. This book shows how Tomcat developers designed and build Tomcat from scratch. Like me, I'm sure you'll learn a lot, much more than Tomcat configuration. For example, you'll learn how a Java HTTP server is written, how object pooling is implemented, how auto-reload works, ect. This is unlike other Tomcat books that are rehash of the free documentation at Tomcat's website.

Surprisingly, the language is simple. If you know a bit of Java, you can follow the chapters comfortably. It starts from a basic HTTP server and servlet container and works its way up to a full Tomcat. You'll enjoy it if you have interest in Java programming.