JavaServer Pages, Second Edition

Audience

This book is for anyone who is interested in using JSP technology to develop web applications. In particular, it’s written to help those of you who develop JSP-based applications, specifically:

Page authors

Page authors primarily develop the web interface to an application. This group uses HTML, stylesheets, and client-side code to develop a rich user interface. Page authors also want to learn to use JSP elements in web pages to interact with the other server components, such as servlets, databases, and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB).

Java programmers

Java programmers are comfortable with the Java programming language and Java servlets. This group wants to learn how to develop JSP components that page authors can use in the web pages, such as JSP custom actions and JavaBeans, and how to combine JSP with other Java server-side technologies, such as servlets and EJB.

The book is structured into three parts, which I describe shortly, to make it easier to find the material you are most interested in.

What You Need to Know

It’s always hard to assume how much you, as the reader, already know. For this book, it was even harder since the material is intended for two types of audiences: page authors and programmers.

I’ve assumed that anyone reading this book has experience with HTML; consequently, I won’t explain the standard HTML elements used in the examples. But even if you’re an HTML wiz, this may be your first exposure to dynamic web content and web applications. A thorough introduction to the HTTP protocol that drives all web applications as well as to the concepts and features that are specific to servlet and JSP-based web applications are, therefore, included. If you want to learn more about HTML, I recommend HTML and XHTML: The Definitive Guide by Chuck Musciano and Bill Kennedy (O’Reilly & Associates, Inc.).

If you’re a page author, I have assumed that you don’t know anything about programming, although it doesn’t hurt if you have played around with client-side scripting languages, such as VBScript or JavaScript (ECMAScript). Using standard and custom components, you should rarely, if ever, have to deal with Java code. Except for one chapter, which deals specifically with how to embed Java code in a JSP page, none of the examples in Part I and Part II requires Java programming knowledge.

I have assumed that the programmers reading this book are familiar with Java programming, object-oriented concepts, and Java servlets. If you plan to develop JSP components for page authors and aren’t familiar with Java programming, I recommend that you read a Java introduction book, such as Learning Java by Patrick Niemeyer and Jonathan Knudsen (O’Reilly). I include a brief introduction to the Servlet API, but I recommend that you also read Java Servlet Programming by Jason Hunter and William Crawford (O’Reilly) or another book that covers the servlet technology in detail.

The chapters dealing with database access require some knowledge of SQL and databases in general. I will explain all that you need to know to run the examples, but if you want to develop database-driven applications, you need to know more about databases than what’s included in this book.