Preloaded servlet

[Goyal]

Hi All,
I have a requirement in which I need to write the connection pool for the database in one servlet, say servlet1. Now this servlet acts as a Database connection pool for all the other servlets present in the same application. The other servlets can collect the database connection from this servlet.
My concern, is how to preload the servlet1, before the request to the other servlets is send. When the request is send to the servlet then an instance of that servlet is created in the server, but for the servlet1 no request is send by the client directly.
Regards
Goyal

[Karthik Banda]

Hi ,
You can load a servlet instance by using java.reflect package as we do in servlet collaboration. This following may help you out..
psuedocode is as:
{
try
{
Servlet ser = ServletContext ctx.getServlet("servletName");
Class xx=Class.forName(ser.getClass().toString());
Object o=xx.newInstance();
}
catch(E)
{
}
}
u will find a few exceptions like InstantiationException, IllegalAccessException, ClassNotFoundException accordingly, in case of any problem...
try with this and let me know the result at
[e-mail]

[Dominic Paquette]

I think that the container(ex.Tomcat) will create an instance of the servlet when it starts up.
Correct me if I'm wrong
Dominic

[Kyle Brown]

My question is, why are you writing your own connection pool in this day and age? ALL of the commercial vendors provide their own connection pooling, and there are at least a dozen open-source implementations of connection pooling!
Kyle

[Mark Howard]

Goyal
You can use the <load-on-startup> tag in the deployment descriptor to instruct the container to load and initialise the servlet as soon as it (the container) is started.
Mark.

[Cindy Glass]

Goyal,
Please change your name to be compliant with JavaRanch's naming policy.
Your displayed name should be 2 separate names with more than 1 letter each. We really would prefer that you use your REAL name.
You can change your name: here.
Thanks,
Cindy

[Marty Hall]

My concern, is how to preload the servlet1, before the request to the other servlets is send.

If servlet1 really needs to be a servlet, use the following in web.xml:

<servlet>
  <servlet-name>...</servlet-name>
  <servlet-class>...</servlet-class>
  [B]<load-on-startup>[/B]
</servlet>

However, if the only purpose of servlet1 is that initialization (ie, servlet1 never handles real requests), then you can use a ServletContextListener instead. More straightforward than a "servlet" that is not really a servlet but just an initializor-thing.
Cheers-
- Marty