Servlet in Java - Features and Upgrades

For creation of dynamic web content, Java has a powerful as well as efficient solution in the form of Servlets. Within a short time span it has become a fundamental block for building of server-side Java. It uses Java as platform to interact with Servlet container. The developer is also provided with object-oriented programming, robust API, strict types, platform neutrality along with all JVM security features. Since its inception it has seen several upgrades. The most recent upgrade is from 2.5 to 3.0. There are rumours of a release of 3.1 version but nothing has been specified as yet. Till then, some of the features and upgrades of the current version has been described here.

Pluggability along with extensibility- These days there are several kinds of web frameworks being used for building of web applications. However, it is not easy to integrate them into web applications since various kinds of pieces must be assimilated together to edit single descriptor file which describes the fitting of the pieces. There are several issues in this regard which can now be easily resolved by virtue of this Servlet version. Now using as well as configuring any framework is really easy through modular web.xml or web fragments which need no configuration.

Easy development- Any technology is marked by the fact whether the development is easy or not. The API of the related technology here makes it easy for development through use of several brand new annotations. They have been defined in a way that allows writing a Servlet without the need of a descriptor. The annotations can be found in javax.servlet.annotation package. In fact, this addition has made it possible to ignore web.xml when there are ServletContectListener, Servlet amd Filter in a single war file. In all, the programming has become declarative-style, resulting in swift development of filter class or servlet through appropriate class annotations.

Security- Now methods to allow programmatic logout and login have been integrated through HTTPServletRequest. A login can be forced through ServletRequest as well. A request’s authentication state can be reset by the logout method without the bounding of authentication to some HTTPSession.

Asynchronous support- Asynchronous processing addition is often reckoned as the biggest change. At some point or the other, all developers have had to face the slow pace of the technology, specifically in those cases where a waiting time is involved for web service, JMS service response, etc. With the addition of support to suspend and resume request processing, the servlet can now process a request in non-blocking asynchronous manner. This feature helps in receiving or sending of unblocked data from client despite slow data. Delayed requests, responses can be handled as well. Even in case of non-blocking or blocking events, it can notify.

Dynamic or programmatic HTTP session configuration- Through this configuration an application can modify session configuration while still in use through API method calls or web.xml file configuration. There can be no changing of a cookie name that has been dynamically modified. The default cookie path can be changed for every application.

Some miscellaneous upgraded features- Besides the really important upgraded features mentioned above there are some other mixed bag add-ons worth mentioning which have made developer experience better and data retrieval easier. Some new convenience methods have been added to ServletRequest so that instances connected with the requested object can be got easily. Cookies can also be marked as HttpOnly ones which are unexposed to scripting code of client-side that helps prevent several kinds of cross-site scripting attacks. This feature is supported by majority of modern browsers.

These upgraded features are no doubt aimed to make the experience of using Java Servlets an easier as well as efficient one. It has improved the entire development experience by multiple times. Now it remains to be seen what other enhancements will be offered n the soon-to be released version. You can get in touch with Java software development companies who can help you develop web apps that are stable, scalable and secure.

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