Core Servlets and JavaServer Pages™

A.15. Integrating Servlets and JSP

Big Picture

• Servlet handles initial request, reads parameters, cookies, session information, etc.

• Servlet then does whatever computations and database lookups are needed.

• Servlet then stores data in beans.

• Servlet forwards request to one of many possible JSP pages to present final result.

• JSP page extracts needed values from beans.

Request Forwarding Syntax

String url = "/path/presentation1.jsp";
RequestDispatcher dispatcher =
  getServletContext().getRequestDispatcher(url);
dispatcher.forward();

Forwarding to Regular HTML Pages

• If initial servlet handles GET requests only, no change is necessary.

• If initial servlet handles POST, then change destination page from SomePage.html to SomePage.jsp so that it, too, can ...