Appendix C. JSP and Tomcat Primer

This appendix describes some essential concepts of JavaServer Pages (JSP) programming, which is used earlier in this book beginning with Chapter 17. The necessary background is fairly extensive, which is why the material is presented here in a separate appendix rather than breaking up the flow of that chapter. The topics discussed here are:

• A brief overview of servlet and JSP technologies

• Setting up the Tomcat server

• Tomcat's directory structure

• The layout of web applications

• Elements of JSP pages

For pointers to additional information about JSP pages, servlets, or Tomcat, see Appendix D.