Customized Servlet and JSP Training Courses

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“Best short course ever!”

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Here are the potential topics covered in the beginning/intermediate servlet and JSP course taught by Marty Hall. If you have a group of at least eight interested developers (10 for courses outside the US or Canada), contact Marty to arrange a course at your location.

Onsite courses are easier administratively, are better for clients since the topics and pace can be customized, are more cost effective for students since no travel is required, and are more convenient (for companies in the Baltimore/Washington area) because the schedule is flexible (e.g. afternoons or evenings instead of n consecutive days). However, if you have too few developers for an onsite course, check out our upcoming servlet and JSP training course in Maryland (co-sponsored by the Johns Hopkins Engineering for Professionals program).

Please note that topics can be added or removed to fit the interest and experience of your developers, and topics from this course can be combined with topics from other related J2EE courses. For example, some organizations want coverage of basic Java 5 or Java 6 programming combined with basic servlet and and JSP topics. Others want to mix the intermediate topics with some of the more advanced topics. Still others want to cover only the most fundamental servlet and JSP topics and then move on to Struts or JSF. However, the syllabus below gives an idea of the most popular option.


Syllabus

Overview and Setup

  • Understanding the role of servlets
  • Evaluating servlets vs. other technologies
  • Understanding the role of JSP
  • Configuring the server
  • Configuring your development environment
  • Testing the server setup

Servlet Basics

  • The basic structure of servlets
  • A simple servlet that generates plain text
  • A servlet that generates HTML
  • Servlets and packages
  • Some utilities that help build HTML
  • The servlet life cycle
  • Servlet debugging strategies

Handling the Client Request: Form Data

  • The role of form data
  • Creating and submitting HTML forms
  • Reading individual request parameters
  • Reading the entire set of request parameters
  • Handling missing and malformed data
  • Dealing with incomplete form submissions
  • Filtering special characters out of the request parameters

Handling the Client Request: HTTP Request Headers

  • Reading HTTP request headers
  • Building a table of all the request headers
  • Understanding the various request headers
  • Reducing download times by compressing pages
  • Differentiating among types of browsers

Generating the Server Response: HTTP Status Codes

  • Format of the HTTP response
  • How to set status codes
  • What the status codes are good for
  • Shortcut methods for redirection and error pages
  • A servlet that redirects users to browser-specific pages
  • A front end to various search engines

Generating the Server Response: HTTP Response Headers

  • Format of the HTTP response
  • Setting response headers
  • Understanding what response headers are good for
  • Building Excel spread sheets
  • Generating JPEG images dynamically
  • Sending incremental updates to the browser

Handling Cookies

  • Understanding the benefits and drawbacks of cookies
  • Sending outgoing cookies
  • Receiving incoming cookies
  • Tracking repeat visitors
  • Specifying cookie attributes
  • Differentiating between session cookies and persistent cookies
  • Simplifying cookie usage with utility classes
  • Modifying cookie values
  • Remembering user preferences

Session Tracking

  • Implementing session tracking from scratch
  • Using basic session tracking
  • Understanding the session-tracking API
  • Differentiating between server and browser sessions
  • Encoding URLs
  • Storing immutable objects vs. storing mutable objects
  • Tracking user access counts
  • Accumulating user purchases
  • Implementing a shopping cart
  • Building an online store

JSP Intro and Overview

  • Understanding the need for JSP
  • Evaluating the benefits of JSP
  • Comparing JSP to other technologies
  • Avoiding JSP misconceptions
  • Understanding the JSP lifecycle
  • Installing JSP pages
  • Looking at JSP in the real world

Invoking Java Code with JSP Scripting Elements

  • Static vs. dynamic text
  • Dynamic code and good JSP design
  • JSP expressions
  • Servlets vs. JSP pages for similar tasks
  • JSP scriptlets
  • JSP declarations
  • Predefined variables
  • Comparison of expressions, scriptlets, and declarations

Controlling the Structure of Generated Servlets: The JSP page Directive

  • Understanding the purpose of the page directive
  • Designating which classes are imported
  • Specifying the MIME type of the page
  • Generating Excel spreadsheets
  • Participating in sessions
  • Setting the size and behavior of the output buffer
  • Designating pages to handle JSP errors
  • Controlling threading behavior

Including Files and Applets in JSP Pages

  • Using jsp:include to include pages at request time
  • Using <%@ include ... %> (the include directive) to include files at page translation time
  • Understanding why jsp:include is usually better than the include directive
  • Using jsp:plugin to include applets for the Java Plug-in

Using JavaBeans Components in JSP Documents

  • Understanding the benefits of beans
  • Creating beans
  • Installing bean classes on your server
  • Accessing bean properties
  • Explicitly setting bean properties
  • Automatically setting bean properties from request parameters
  • Sharing beans among multiple servlets and JSP pages

Integrating Servlets and JSP: The Model View Controller (MVC) Architecture

  • Understanding the benefits of MVC
  • Using RequestDispatcher to implement MVC
  • Forwarding requests from servlets to JSP pages
  • Handling relative URLs
  • Choosing among different display options
  • Comparing data-sharing strategies

Simplifying Access to Java Code: The JSP 2.0 Expression Language

  • Motivating use of the expression language
  • Understanding the basic syntax
  • Understanding the relationship of the expression language to the MVC architecture
  • Referencing scoped variables
  • Accessing bean properties, array elements, List elements, and Map entries
  • Using expression language operators
  • Evaluating expressions conditionally

Using and Deploying Web Applications

  • Purpose of Web applications
  • Structure of Web applications
  • Setting up Web applications with Tomcat
  • Giving custom addresses to servlets
  • Sharing data among Web applications

Controlling Web Application Behavior with web.xml

  • Location and purpose of web.xml
  • Custom URLs
  • Initialization parameters
  • Preloading pages
  • Welcome pages
  • Error pages

Creating Custom JSP Tag Libraries: The Basics

  • Java-based tags
    • Components of a tag library
    • Basic tags
    • Tags that use body content
    • Tags that optionally use body content
  • JSP-based tags (tag files)
    • Components of a tag library
    • Basic tags
    • Tags that use attributes
    • Tags that use body content

Accessing Databases with JDBC

  • Overview of JDBC technology
  • JDBC drivers
  • Seven basic steps in using JDBC
  • Using JNDI with JDBC
  • Retrieving data from a ResultSet
  • Using prepared and callable statements
  • Handling SQL exceptions
  • Submitting multiple statements as a transaction

Ajax: Asynchronous Page Updates

  • The basic Ajax process
  • Using dynamic content and JSP
  • Using dynamic content and servlets
  • Sending GET data
  • Sending POST data
  • Displaying HTML results
  • Parsing and displaying XML results