Audience

The recipes are mainly designed for experienced developers who design, build, deploy, and revise Java-based web applications. This includes JSP, servlet, and JavaBean developers.

The book is also appropriate for experienced web developers who are just learning Java and migrating from another web programming platform, such as Active Server Pages, PHP, or Perl. These developers are usually knowledgable about the underlying mechanisms, such as sessions, cookies, file uploads, login authentication, and handling HTTP POST requests , but may not yet know how to implement these tasks in Java. The cookbook allows them to quickly look up a solution to a problem that they have probably already dealt with using another language.

Java developers who need to know how to implement new servlet API 2.4 and JSP 2.0 features (such as some of the new web.xml filter-mapping elements for request dispatchers and embedding the Expression Language [EL] in a JSP's template text) will also find the cookbook handy.

What You Need to Know

Readers should know the basics of the Java language or be learning how to program with Java.

Chapter 1, includes brief introductions to servlets, JSPs, and deployment descriptors for readers who are not yet up to speed on these concepts. However, since the cookbook's focus is on concise solutions to specific problems, it does not include long tutorials on the servlet and JSP APIs. Each recipe includes an introduction that provides enough information to get started with the various technologies and code samples. The recipes also include numerous references to online information resources, such as Javadoc pages and tutorials, for readers who need to explore a topic in greater depth.

Readers will benefit from having already been introduced to various J2EE subject areas such as Java Database Connectivity (JDBC), the Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI), and Enterprise JavaBeans (I have included one recipe that involves connecting a web component with EJBs using JNDI) .

Finally, a working knowledge of XML is also helpful, as Java web development involves XML-based deployment descriptors and configuration files.