Head first servlets and JSP - Hands on MVC exercise - help!

[Matt Richardson]

Hi there,

I'm trying to work through Head First Servlets and JSP but I'm stuck on the hands-on MVC exercise in chapter 3.

I'm trying to compile the first version of the controller servlet using javac. I have set up the classpath correctly but the servlet is failing with syntax errors. I am unable to see all of these, because they are scrolling off the top of my msdos command window (I know, I should probably use Linux), but it looks rather like the problems start with the import statements. I suspect that the servlet-api.jar file is not being found.

The javac command I am using is

javac -classpath C:\tomcat\common\lib\servlet-api.jar:classes:. -d classes src\com\example\web\BeerSelect.java

I'm sure the path is right

I have also tried - which is what the jar file looks like under a msdos dir command:

javac -classpath C:\tomcat\common\lib\SERVLE~1.JAR:classes:. -d classes src\com\example\web\BeerSelect.java

I can see my servlet-api.jar file under this directory

My source code file is as follows (in case there is actually something wrong with that)

package com.example.web;

import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
import java.io.*;

public class BeerSelect extends HttpServlet {

public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response)
throws IOException, ServletException {

response.setContentType("text/html");
PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
out.println("Beer Selection Advice<br>");
String c = request.getParameter("color");
out.println("<br>Got beer color " + c);
}
}

Please can anyone help otherwise I risk getting certified in an entirely different sense?

Thanks,

Matt

[Matt Richardson]

I think I've managed to compile my servlet - I used the command

javac -classpath C:\tomcat\common\lib\servlet-api.jar -d classes C:\Matt\Java\projects\beerv1\src\com\example\web\BeerSelect.java

and took out the ':classes:.' part after servlet-api.jar that was in the book - presumably that must be some unix/linux specific syntax?

Thanks

[M Rama]

Your class path should've been the following:

javac -classpath C:/Tomcat5.5/common/lib/servlet-api.jar;classes;. -d classes src/com/example/web/BeerSelect.java

you got colons instead of semicolons...

[Matt Richardson]

Thanks for your help - this is in error in the 2004 version of the book (not sure whether this is the latest edition).

Regards,

Matt