Difference between javax.servlet-api.jar vs servlet-api.jar

Question

In my maven repository under groupId javax.servlet i have these two separate artifacts for servlets. I am confused which one should i use to build a simple servlet application? What's the difference between these two artifacts?

Answer 1

javax.servlet-api version 3.0.1 has annotation folder which contains different annotation classes where servlet-api version 2.5 or below (i.e version 2.4) does not contain annotation.

Annotation represents the metadata. If you use annotation, deployment descriptor i.e. web.xml is not required. For example if you use annotation like @WebServlet("/hello") in your servlet file then you don't need to mention servlet mapping in web.xml file.

Some of useful Annotations are:

@HandlesTypes @HttpConstraint  @HttpMethodConstraint @MultipartConfig @ServletSecurity @WebFilter @WebInitParam @WebListener @WebServlet 

Answer 2

You need to add

<dependency>         <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>         <artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>         <version>3.1.0</version>         <scope>provided</scope> </dependency> 

to your project. The version you need may differ - it depends on your servlet container, e.g. Tomcat.

<scope>provided</scope> because you don't need it in runtime, it's already in your servlet container.