Beginning and Intermediate-Level
Servlet, JSP, and JDBC Tutorials

Interested in live training from the author of these tutorials?
See the upcoming public servlet & JSP course in Maryland
or contact hall@coreservlets.com for information
on a customized onsite version at your location.

The beginning and intermediate-level tutorials on this page are based on the second edition of Marty's book Core Servlets and JavaServer Pages, and have been tested by Marty in live training courses in the US, Canada, Australia, Puerto Rico, Japan, Mexico, and the Philippines. Also see the training materials home page for advanced servlet and JSP tutorials, Ajax and GWT tutorials (includes tutorials on JavaScript, Scriptaculous, and Prototype), Jakarta Struts tutorials, Apache Tomcat tutorials, JSF tutorials, Java 5 & Java 6 tutorials, and tutorials in Chinese and Japanese.

The PDF versions of the tutorials are freely available to anyone for personal use. These versions contain the complete text of the PowerPoint slides, and are what you want if your goal is to learn or review the technology. As a courtesy, coreservlets.com also makes the original PowerPoint slides available to faculty teaching courses that do not compete with Marty's live courses. See the J2EE instructor materials page for details.

To arrange a servlet & JSP course at your organization based on these materials, contact info@coreservlets.com. These courses can be customized to use any combination of the materials on the J2EE tutorials site, and new materials can be added for specific client needs. To learn more details about the instructor, the curriculum for the live training courses, or the public course schedule, please see http://courses.coreservlets.com.

If you find these free tutorials helpful, we would appreciate it if you would link to us.

Servlets & JSP: Overview and Setup

This tutorial section in PDF. Best for printing and detailed study.
This tutorial section in HTML. Best for quick online learning. Generated by MS Office 2007 and works in Internet Explorer only. You can also download ZIP file of the complete set of HTML tutorials and read them offline or post them on your local Web site.
Source code of examples in this section. Code bundled as an Eclipse project.
Source code of related servlet & JSP examples. Code in individual files.
Topics covered
- 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

This tutorial section in PDF. Best for printing and detailed study.
This tutorial section in HTML. Best for quick online learning. Generated by MS Office 2007 and works in Internet Explorer only. You can also download ZIP file of the complete set of HTML tutorials and read them offline or post them on your local Web site.
Source code of examples in this section. Code bundled as an Eclipse project.
Source code of related servlet & JSP examples. Code in individual files.
Topics covered
- 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

This tutorial section in PDF. Best for printing and detailed study.
This tutorial section in HTML. Best for quick online learning. Generated by MS Office 2007 and works in Internet Explorer only. You can also download ZIP file of the complete set of HTML tutorials and read them offline or post them on your local Web site.
Source code of examples in this section. Code bundled as an Eclipse project.
Source code of related servlet & JSP examples. Code in individual files.
Topics covered
- 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

This tutorial section in PDF. Best for printing and detailed study.
This tutorial section in HTML. Best for quick online learning. Generated by MS Office 2007 and works in Internet Explorer only. You can also download ZIP file of the complete set of HTML tutorials and read them offline or post them on your local Web site.
Source code of examples in this section. Code bundled as an Eclipse project.
Source code of related servlet & JSP examples. Code in individual files.
Topics covered
- 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

This tutorial section in PDF. Best for printing and detailed study.
This tutorial section in HTML. Best for quick online learning. Generated by MS Office 2007 and works in Internet Explorer only. You can also download ZIP file of the complete set of HTML tutorials and read them offline or post them on your local Web site.
Source code of examples in this section. Code bundled as an Eclipse project.
Source code of related servlet & JSP examples. Code in individual files.
Topics covered
- 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

This tutorial section in PDF. Best for printing and detailed study.
This tutorial section in HTML. Best for quick online learning. Generated by MS Office 2007 and works in Internet Explorer only. You can also download ZIP file of the complete set of HTML tutorials and read them offline or post them on your local Web site.
Source code of examples in this section. Code bundled as an Eclipse project.
Source code of related servlet & JSP examples. Code in individual files.
Topics covered
- 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

This tutorial section in PDF. Best for printing and detailed study.
This tutorial section in HTML. Best for quick online learning. Generated by MS Office 2007 and works in Internet Explorer only. You can also download ZIP file of the complete set of HTML tutorials and read them offline or post them on your local Web site.
Source code of examples in this section. Code bundled as an Eclipse project.
Source code of related servlet & JSP examples. Code in individual files.
Topics covered
- 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

This tutorial section in PDF. Best for printing and detailed study.
This tutorial section in HTML. Best for quick online learning. Generated by MS Office 2007 and works in Internet Explorer only. You can also download ZIP file of the complete set of HTML tutorials and read them offline or post them on your local Web site.
Source code of examples in this section. Code bundled as an Eclipse project.
Source code of related servlet & JSP examples. Code in individual files.
Topics covered
- 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 Introduction & Overview

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This tutorial section in HTML. Best for quick online learning. Generated by MS Office 2007 and works in Internet Explorer only. You can also download ZIP file of the complete set of HTML tutorials and read them offline or post them on your local Web site.
Source code of examples in this section. Code bundled as an Eclipse project.
Source code of related servlet & JSP examples. Code in individual files.
Topics covered
- 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

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This tutorial section in HTML. Best for quick online learning. Generated by MS Office 2007 and works in Internet Explorer only. You can also download ZIP file of the complete set of HTML tutorials and read them offline or post them on your local Web site.
Source code of examples in this section. Code bundled as an Eclipse project.
Source code of related servlet & JSP examples. Code in individual files.
Topics covered
- 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
- JSP pages in XML syntax

Controlling the Structure of Generated Servlets: The JSP page Directive

This tutorial section in PDF. Best for printing and detailed study.
This tutorial section in HTML. Best for quick online learning. Generated by MS Office 2007 and works in Internet Explorer only. You can also download ZIP file of the complete set of HTML tutorials and read them offline or post them on your local Web site.
Source code of examples in this section. Code bundled as an Eclipse project.
Source code of related servlet & JSP examples. Code in individual files.
Topics covered
- 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

This tutorial section in PDF. Best for printing and detailed study.
This tutorial section in HTML. Best for quick online learning. Generated by MS Office 2007 and works in Internet Explorer only. You can also download ZIP file of the complete set of HTML tutorials and read them offline or post them on your local Web site.
Source code of examples in this section. Code bundled as an Eclipse project.
Source code of related servlet & JSP examples. Code in individual files.
Topics covered
- 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

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Source code of examples in this section. Code bundled as an Eclipse project.
Source code of related servlet & JSP examples. Code in individual files.
Topics covered
- 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

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

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This tutorial section in HTML. Best for quick online learning. Generated by MS Office 2007 and works in Internet Explorer only. You can also download ZIP file of the complete set of HTML tutorials and read them offline or post them on your local Web site.
Source code of examples in this section. Code bundled as an Eclipse project.
Source code of related servlet & JSP examples. Code in individual files.
Topics covered
- 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
- Tutorials on MVC frameworks:
  - Jakarta Struts (Action Framework) Tutorial
  - JavaServer Faces (JSF) and Apache MyFaces Tutorial

The JSP 2 Expression Language: Simplifying MVC and Access to Java Code

This tutorial section in PDF. Best for printing and detailed study.
This tutorial section in HTML. Best for quick online learning. Generated by MS Office 2007 and works in Internet Explorer only. You can also download ZIP file of the complete set of HTML tutorials and read them offline or post them on your local Web site.
Source code of examples in this section. Code bundled as an Eclipse project.
Source code of related servlet & JSP examples. Code in individual files.
Topics covered
- 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
- Comparing MVC pages: with and without the EL

Using and Deploying Web Applications

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Topics covered
- Purpose of Web applications
- Structure of Web applications
- Setting up Web applications with Tomcat
- Sharing data among Web applications

Advanced Topics

The tutorials in this section cover basic and intermediate servlet and JSP programming techniques. See the advanced servlet and JSP tutorials section for information on filters, listeners, declarative security, programmatic security, custom tag libraries, and more.

More Information

Java

Java SE 6 API
Java SE 5 API
Java EE 5 API. Includes the servlet 2.5 and JSP 2.1 APIs.
Java Programming Tutorials
Recommended Java Programming Books

Servlets & JSP

Servlet 2.4 API. Supported by Tomcat 5.x and 6.x.
JSP 2.0 API. Supported by Tomcat 5.x and 6.x.
Servlet 2.5 API. Supported by Tomcat 6.x. However, since 2.5 was a relatively minor release, many developers just follow the servlet 2.4 specification.
JSP 2.1 API. Supported by Tomcat 6.x. However, since 2.1 was a relatively minor release, many developers just follow the JSP 2.0 specification.
Beginning/Intermediate Servlet and JSP Tutorials
Advanced Servlet and JSP Tutorials
Recommended Servlet & JSP Books