Introduction to Servlet technology

Like other Java program servlet can be compiled using javac compiler, it can be deployed in configured environment to run.

Setting up Java Development Kit

The step involve downloading an implementation of Java Software Development Kit (SDK) and setting up of PATH environment variable appropriately.

Java SDK can be downloaded from Oracle's Java site: Java SE Downloads.

Click on JDK download.

After the setup files are download double click on the downloaded exe and install JDK

After installation is complete, Configure PATH and JAVA_HOME in environment variables section. We will also need to create a new variable called JAVA_HOME. An example paths that would want to put in are shown below but these paths will change depending on where you end up installing JDK in the first place anyway.

PATH = C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_40\bin;
JAVA_HOME= C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.8.0_40

Here is how we created JAVA_HOME variable under windows OS and edited Path variable

Once set, open command prompt and to verify that JAVA_HOME is set correctly, run this command below

Setting up Web Server: Tomcat

Apache Tomcat is open source software implementation for Java Servlet and Java Server Pages technologies which act as standalone server for testing servlets and integrated with Apache Web Server. The Steps for setup of Tomcat:

• Latest version of Tomcat can be Download from http://tomcat.apache.org/.
• After download unpack binary distribution into a convenient location. Example C:\apache-tomcat-8.0.21 on windows
  
  
  
  
• Configure CATALINA_HOME in environment variable section by adding New User Variable for CATALINA_HOME.
  
  
  
  
• Verify the CATALINA _HOME path by typing below command in command prompt.
  
  
  
  
• Start Apache Web Server by running startup.bat from Command Prompt.
  
  
  
  

After tomcat starts up, default web applications will be running in http://localhost:8080/.

Now that we have set ourselves up to pay with servlets, let's jump into understanding life cycle of a servlet in next part of this quick start tutorial on Servlets.