Why dont we write constructors in servlets?

[Sriram Sharma]

Hi All,

I am quite interested in knowing why we dont write any constructors in servlets!
Can we write constructors in servlets?
Whats the fundamental involved here?

Regards,
Sriram

[Paul Sturrock]

We never construct Servlets, that is always done by the Servlet container. Have a read through this, it should explain a lot of the background.

[Seetharaman Venkatasamy]

Yes, As paul mentioned, servlet must have default constructor[no-arg constructor] .

[Sriram Sharma]

Let me take the older type of servlets that developers write.
Developers write with out.println() statements to print the html.
In such cases also, we dont write constructors.
Its fine that default constructor is available for any class.
But, is there any specific reason for not writing constructor in such cases?

Regards,
Sriram

[Seetharaman Venkatasamy]

did you read the link which is given by paul ?

[Anirvan Majumdar]

Well, there's no stopping anyone from writing a constructor for a servlet. However, you need to keep in mind that the servlet context is NOT initialised at the point when the constructor is invoked.
You can most definitely perform some house-keeping tasks like initialisations or checking on the availability of services/resources, but that's the very purpose for which the init() is available as part of the servlet's lifecycle.

In my opinion, there's no particular 'purpose' to defining a constructor for a servlet. Of course, one might never know when a skewed requirement comes along mandating a constructor definition for a servlet. Do let us know if you're already aware of any such requirement.