Servlets with Database design

Question

I have a general question about using Servlet and JDBC.

For instance, I have a class called MyDatabaseManager, which provides functions

public boolean updateUser(User user) {...}
public boolean deleteUser(User user) {...}
public boolean inserUser(User user){...}

, these functions will access and manipulate the Database.

My question is on the Servlet implementation. I am using three Servlets (UpdateUserServlet,InsertUserServlet and DeleteUserServlet) at the moment and each Servlet calls the MyDatabaseManager instance (only one instance here, using Singleton pattern) function. (For example, UpdateUserServlet calls MyDatabaseManager.updateUser ...).

I think this is the most straightforward way of using Servlet and Database. But I am not sure if this is the correct way of doing it. For example, how is this implemented in the industry world.

Answer 1

People don't really use servlets directly nowadays, they use frameworks that allow you to simplify your work, but if you really want to use servlets, you can make all actions in a single one, using the other methods, doPut, doDelete and even creating your own methods. Here's a sample of how you would do it:

public abstract class BaseServlet extends HttpServlet {

    @Override
    protected void service(HttpServletRequest request,
        HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
        String method = request.getParameter("_method");
        if ("form".equals(method)) {
            this.doForm(request, response);
        } else {
            if ("delete".equals(method)) {
                this.doDelete(request, response);
            } else {
        super.service(request, response);
            }
        }
   }

   protected void doForm(HttpServletRequest request,
        HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {
        throw new UnsupportedOperationException();
   }

}

As you can see, this Servlet uses a special field _method on forms to decide what special method to call, if the _method is not available it's going to use the usual service method and is going to call doGet or doPost.

And here's how an implementation for this servlet would look like:

public class UsersServlet extends BaseServlet {

private UsersRepository cadastro = new UsersRepository();

@Override
protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp)
        throws ServletException, IOException {

    req.setAttribute("usuarios", cadastro.list());
    req.getRequestDispatcher("/usuarios/listar.jsp").forward(req, resp);

}

@Override
protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp)
        throws ServletException, IOException {

    User usuario = this.getUser(req);

    usuario.setNome(req.getParameter("nome"));
    usuario.setEmail(req.getParameter("email"));
    usuario.setSenha(req.getParameter("senha"));

    this.cadastro.persist(usuario);

    resp.sendRedirect(req.getContextPath() + "/usuarios");

}

protected User getUser(HttpServletRequest req) {
    User usuario;

    if (req.getParameter("id") == null) {
        usuario = new Usuario();
    } else {
        Long id = new Long(req.getParameter("id"));
        usuario = this.cadastro.search(id);
    }

    return usuario;
}

@Override
protected void doDelete(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp)
        throws ServletException, IOException {
    User usuario = this.getUser(req);
    this.cadastro.remover(usuario);
    resp.sendRedirect(req.getContextPath() + "/usuarios");
}

@Override
protected void doForm(HttpServletRequest request,
        HttpServletResponse response) throws ServletException, IOException {

    User usuario = this.getUser(request);

    request.setAttribute("usuario", usuario);
    request.getRequestDispatcher("/usuarios/form.jsp").forward(request,
            response);
}

}

This way you can make it all in a single servlet.