Customer Reviews

Java Servlet & JSP Cookbook

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The 'cookbook' in the title means that Perry emphasises what he considers to be many common tasks needed to be done by Java Servlets and JSPs, in a J2EE context. Similar in spirit to OReilly's other books like 'eBay Hacks' and 'google Hacks'. In fact, in the 26 chapters of Perry's book, there are on average over 5 tasks in each that he explains, which are akin to the hacks of the other books. Except here, he gives you over 130 hacks.

He assumes you know the basics of the subject. Certainly, the book does not claim to be a comprehensive listing of the subject's features. But if you satisfy this requirement, you can dive straight into any section of any chapter. Don't have to read this book linearly.

However, if you aren't using Tomcat or BEA WebLogic as containers, then the relevance of the book may, frankly, be more limited. Different containers have slightly different functionalities, and the examples he gives are very specific to those 2 containers. If you are in fact using another, perhaps you can use this book to provide design patterns and inspiration, but not actual code.

Being an O'Reilly fan it is hard for me to find fault with their no-nonsense approach to technical books, but there is one MAJOR issue I have with this book.

As a developer for a major corporation I cannot use custom libraries for my work, especially when the license (http://www.servlets.com/cos/license.html) does not allow for commercial use. Where it would be helpful to see details on creating say, a multipart request class, Bruce Perry instead uses the com.oreilly.servlet.MultipartRequest class to hide much of the functionality (this is just one example).

This makes little or no sense. Developers in the real world need real examples. Hiding the implementation of such under the non-commercial license pretty much ruins much of the potential application of an otherwise well written book. If you buy this book realise that only some of it will actually be useful in the real world.

In the great tradition of cookbooks, O'Reilly has published the Java Servlet and JSP Cookbook. This book, written by Bruce W. Perry is a must-own book for anyone working with web applications in the Java space. I've been a Java developer for almost 8 years now and have been working with Servlets since early 1999 and I've learned quite a few things from this book.

The Java Servlet & JSP Cookbook provides more than 200 'recipes' or fully working and documented code snippets that you can directly cut-and-paste in your application. The book starts off with a quick intro to writing servlets and JSP pages. I was very impressed that the first JSP page that you write uses JSTL and is not loaded up with scriptlet code. I am just sick and tired of arguing with people with scriptlets are bad and it's nice to see a book that starts off with JSTL. Kudos Bruce.

Once the intro is complete, you move onto writing deployment descriptors, deployment along with a nice little chapter on Ant. One of the most common question after people deploy JSP based application is the idea of precompiling JSPs for performance reasons. The fifth chapter does a great job of suggesting several methods of precompiling JSPs. I should also mention that the book includes how-to guides for Tomcat and WebLogic, which covers a pretty large landscape of web containers. WebSphere, Resin, Jetty are not directly covered.

The book then moves on and covers topics such as handling Form data via POST/GET, uploading files, cookies, session tracking and URL rewriting. There is also a chapter on JavaScript and how they use JavaScript with servlets. I don't really understand the point of this chapter as most users just need a few cut-n-paste JavaScript for client-side FORM validation. There is also a chapter on streaming non-HTML content such as PDF, audio/video files and others to the browser.

I also liked the chapter of logging in Servlets and JSPs. This chapter includes a nice introduction to Log4j and a nice tag library that uses Log4j under the cover. My favorite chapter in this book was the chapter dealing with authentication. The chapter starts off by talking setting users in Tomcat and then moves into setting up BASIC authentication. The next recipe talks about using Form-based authentication. The chapter is rounded off with a good treatment of the Java Authentication and Authorization service (JAAS). In this chapter, you create your own custom LoginModule and then use JAAS in a servlet and JSP.

There is also a chapter about embedding multimedia content inside JSPs. This is not something I'm really interested in and I just glossed over this chapter. The same goes for the next chapter on manipulation of the HttpRequest. The next chapter does a great job of exploring Servlet Filters, which is a great feature introduced in the Servlet 2.3 specification that hasn't really caught on. Filters are great and the book includes some great examples of how best to use them.

The next section includes chapters on sending, accessing email from servlets along with database access. Most complex application usually will implement some backend service to access database and separate the business logic from the data and the data from the UI, but the included recipes will help get you up and running for simple application.

I really liked the section on custom tag libraries and JSTL. Tag Libraries are a great way to avoid scriptlet code in JSPs. The chapter on JSTL is also fairly comprehensive and includes code snippets for the core, XML, format, and SQL tags. There is also a great section on the Expression Language (EL) which has been migrated from JSTL 1.0 to the JSP 2.0 specification.

I could go on about this book but I won't bore you any longer, assuming you are still reading. I highly recommend this book for anyone doing any type of Web development using Servlet and JSPs. I mentioned this earlier, but I've been writing Servlets and JSPs for the past 5 years and I've learned quite a few things from this book. Add this book to your library today. The code for this book is available on O'Reilly dot com

Target Audience
Web developers who are looking for real-life examples of the use of servlets and JSP.

Contents
This is a companion-type book that goes beyond strictly reference material to the use of different servlet and JSP features, along with working examples of code to illustrate the concepts.

The book is divided multiple chapters that each cover a different technique or function:

Writing Servlets and JSPs; Deploying Servlets and JSPs; Naming Your Servlets; Using Apache Ant; Altering the Format of JSPs; Dynamically Including Content In Servlets and JSPs; Handling Web Form Data in Servlets and JSPs; Uploading Files; Handling Exceptions in Web Applications; Reading And Setting Cookies; Session Tracking; Integrating JavaScript with Servlets And JSPs; Sending Non-HTML Content; Logging Messages from Servlets and JSPs; Authenticating Clients; Binding, Accessing, and Removing Attributes in Web Applications; Embedding Multimedia in JSPs; Working With The Client Request; Filtering Request and Responses; Managing Email In Servlets and JSPs; Accessing Databases; Using Custom Tag Libraries; Using The JSTL; Internationalization; Using JNDI and Enterprise JavaBeans; Harvesting Web Information; Using the Google and Amazon Web APIs

Review
I really like the O'Reilly Cookbook series. I read a lot as part of my ongoing study, and often it's easy to understand conceptually what is going on. But making the jump to practical solutions can be difficult at times. The Cookbook series gets plenty of use on my bookshelf as I do my day to day coding. And when it comes to servlet and JSP coding as I continue to learn more about Websphere Application Server, this book will surely become dog-eared like the rest of them. Bruce Perry has done a great job.

As with most Cookbook titles, each chapter in the Servlet And JSP Cookbook is made up of a number of Problem/Solution/Discussion groupings. This format proposes a coding problem, states the solution to solve it, and then devotes the necessary space to discuss the solution both with text and code. By using this format, you can think through a working solution and determine how to apply that technique to your own problem. Perry covers a wide range of problems that will help both the beginner and the experienced coder. For beginners, the solutions for setting cookies with servlets and JSPs may be just what you need to get started. Experienced people will find the internationalization and JNDI/Enterprise JavaBeans solutions useful. I appreciate the fact that coders of all experience levels can get something out of this book.

The only caveat I have on this book is that it is very focused on the Tomcat and WebLogic web application servers. If that's your platform of choice, you're going to get everything this book has to offer. For me, I'm partial to the WebSphere platform. While I will benefit from a lot of this book, there are chapters that will have no appeal to me, such as using the Ant package. I will also need to pay attention to the coding examples to make sure that the techniques are coded correctly for my platform of choice. Even with that warning, I would still highly recommend this book to all coders working in this area.

Conclusion
This is definitely a title that will be useful to you as you learn more about servlet and JSP programming. It will give you the ideas you need to solve real business problems you'll encounter as a developer.

This book is exactly what it claims to be: a general reference to hundreds of "everyday" situations Java Web developers face. Just as any cookbook, it doesn't go into the "deepest" details about every little thing, and it does give examples of ways to not reinvent the wheel. Some reviewers see this as worthy of only 1 star... This is only a 1 star book for readers who like to reinvent the wheel and waste time on unnecessary details... if you're like me and have deadlines to meet, you'll find what you need here quickly and efficiently.

I'm not a big reviewer. I find writing a challenge, even if it's a positive experience, as it is now. I started learning Java a few months ago and bought a number of books on the topics I needed to really create a java website.
I stumbled on this book as one of the ten or so I purchased.

I haven't touched the other's since. This book has it all, written so clearly that you know the author is very familiar with her subject and understands it thouroughly. It was written in 2003 and discusses Tomcat server as release 4.0 but that does not matter one bit. I was truly able to use this book to put together a website. Servlet, jsp, even java script is covered. I found many questions I had assembled reading the other books being answered in this one.
Murach's books should be proud of this and I notice that they don't publish a 100 books on a subject; just have a few. I'll bet they're just as good.

A good book. Not for someone looking for a "tutorial" or "introduction" on the subjects covered. However, a good reference book to find examples of specific programming problems for someone who already has a good understanding of servlets and JSP. Covers a good number of different aspects of servlet/JSP programming. I also found it a good book to convey some general knowledge in areas like using attributes, DB access, etc. I enjoyed selectively reading different chapters.

As some other reviewer pointed out (read his reveiw for details), the examples are based on Oreilly's Library, the realy nitty-gritty stuff is completely skipped. I think author is cuckoo, to beleive he expects most of his readers to pay for this joke of a book. I paid four dollars and fifty cents for it (second hand) .... about right price.