Re: When GET = POST?

[Jason Childers <childers_j () yahoo com>]

J2EE app servers allow for discretionary functionality
based on the type of request that comes in, but it's
more than common-place to just wrap the methods in
question so that there's a single point of entry (or
so it seems) into the webapp.

Here's an excerpt from the
javax.servlet.http.HTTPServlet class for J2EE 1.3.x:

"Provides an abstract class to be subclassed to create
an HTTP servlet suitable for a Web site. A subclass of
HttpServlet must override at least one method, usually
one of these: 

- doGet, if the servlet supports HTTP GET requests 
- doPost, for HTTP POST requests 
- doPut, for HTTP PUT requests 
- doDelete, for HTTP DELETE requests 
- init and destroy, to manage resources that are held
for the life of the servlet 
- getServletInfo, which the servlet uses to provide
information about itself"

You can check out the javadocs here:
http://java.sun.com/j2ee/sdk_1.3/techdocs/api/index.html

Most webapp functionality is almost entirely dependent
on doGet and doPost, and most webapps I've seen either
wrap one or the other... for example:

public class MyServlet extends HTTPServlet {
    
    public void doGet (Request req, Response resp) {

        // just forward this to the doPost method
        this.doPost(req, resp);
    }

    public void doPost (Request req, Response resp) {
        // do what you want to do with the request
here
    }
}

Note that the above signatures aren't the exact method
signatures, but they indicate the idea.

I'm working with the Apache Struts framework right now
which hides a lot of the controller implementation
from the developer.  I haven't take a look to see
exactly what they do behind the scenes, whether they
wrap functionality or not... but I'm about to, 'cause
this thread has gotten me curious. ;)

Hope that gives you some idea of how J2EE apps are
being developed.

Cheers,
-Jason


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