JavaServer Pages Training and Certification

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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 behaviour of the output buffer
• Designating pages to handle JSP errors
• Controlling threading behaviour

• 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

• 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

• Understanding the benefits of MVC
• Using Request Dispatcher to implement MVC
• Forwarding requests from servlets to JSP pages
• Handling relative URLs
• Choosing among different display options
• Comparing data-sharing strategies

• 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

• Purpose of Web applications
• Structure of Web applications
• Setting up Web applications with Tomcat
• Giving custom addresses to servlets
• Sharing data among Web applications

• Location and purpose of web.xml
• Custom URLs
• Initialization parameters
• Preloading pages
• Welcome pages
• Error pages

• Major security concerns
• Declarative vs. programmatic security
• Using form-based authentication
• Using BASIC authentication

• Problems with declarative security
• Combination security: mixing server-managed and servlet-managed (programmatic) security
• Pure programmatic security

• Filter basics
• Accessing the servlet context
• Using initialization parameters
• Blocking responses
• Modifying responses

• Reason for listeners
• Monitoring creation and destruction of the servlet context
• Detecting changes in servlet context attributes
• Recognizing session creation and destruction
• Watching for changes in session attributes
• Combining activities

Java-based tags

• Components of a tag library
• Basic tags
• Tags that use body content
• Tags that optionally use body content

JSP-based tags (tag files)

• Components of a tag library
• Basic tags
• Tags that use attributes
• Tags that use body content

• Tags with dynamic attribute values
• Tags with complex objects for attributes
• Manipulating the tag body
• Looping tags
• Nested tags
• Using SAX and TagLibraryValidator to validate tag library syntax

• Obtaining JSTL documentation and code
• The JSTL Expression Language
• Looping Tags
• Conditional Evaluation Tags
• Database Access Tags
• Other Tags

• Overview of JDBC technology
• JDBC drivers
• Seven basic steps in using JDBC
• Using JNDI with JDBC
• Retrieving data from a ResultSet
• Using prepared and callable statements
• Handling SQL exceptions
• Submitting multiple statements as a transaction

• The basic Ajax process
• Using dynamic content and JSP
• Using dynamic content and servlets
• Sending GET data
• Sending POST data
• Displaying HTML results
• Parsing and displaying XML results