Sams Teach Yourself J2EE™ in 21 Days, Second Edition

What Is a JSP?

A JSP is just another servlet, and like HTTP servlets, a JSP is a server-side Web component that can be used to generate dynamic Web pages. You can think of JSPs as HTML web pages with embedded Java, whereas servlets are Java classes that generate HTML.

To illustrate this difference, Listings 13.1 and 13.2 are the same Web page coded as a servlet and as a JSP, respectively. Each Web page simply reads a parameter called name from the HTTP request and creates an HTML page displaying the value of the name parameter. Listing 13.1 shows the servlet, and Listing 13.2 shows the JSP.

Listing 13.1. Simple Dynamic Page as a Servlet

import java.io.*; import javax.servlet.*; import javax.servlet.http.*; public class Hello extends HttpServlet ...