[thelist] java servlet question

[Mattias Thorslund]

Hassan Schroeder wrote:
> On 3/27/07, Bruce Gilbert <webguync at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> I am attempting some tutorials from a book I bouth called 'Foundations
>> of Ajax', and the exercises that involve a java servlet are not
>> working. These are files ending in .java that are called from the html
>> file with JS/CSS etc. My question I guess is does the .java servlet
>> file need to live in a certain directory on the server or is there any
>> special installation on the server end to get this to work? The server
>> is remote, so I don't have direct access to it, but I do know it's an
>> apache server.
>>     
>
> The Apache httpd server doesn't support servlets.
>
> You would be better off to install a local copy of Tomcat (get it from
> tomcat.apache.org) and work from there.
>
> And a servlet's source (.java) file needs to be compiled into a .class
> file, put in a specific place, mapped in the webapp's deployment
> descriptor -- there's a bit to it. I'd try to google up some introductory
> servlet tutorial, for starters. Alternatively, you may be able to figure
> it out from the examples that come with Tomcat.
>
> HTH,
>   

I can't help to think that that's quite a log to go thorough just for
the purpose of learning AJAX. AJAX itself is a client technique and not
dependent on any particular server technology. This book seems to be
helpful mostly to people who happen to run a Java server, or folks who
can easily rewrite the examples into whatever they need (not necessarily
hard).

Bruce, you might be better off returning your book and finding one that
uses a server-side platform that is available to you. There must be
boatloads of AJAX books, and surely there is one where the server-side
examples are PHP or something else that you can easily run on your
Apache server.

HTH,

Mattias