Tomcat 6 Developer's Guide: Understanding how a servlet container actually works will add greatly to your Java EE web programming skills, and this comprehensive guide to Tomcat is the perfect starting point.

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4.3 (3 Ratings)

Paperback Dec 2009 416 pages 1st Edition

$19.99 per month

Paperback Dec 2009 416 pages 1st Edition

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Key benefits

Take your Java EE web programming skills to the next level by getting an expert's level understanding of the servlet specification and its reference implementation, Apache Tomcat.
Build a Tomcat distribution from its source code, and explore the components, classes, and technologies that make up this container.
Use standard development tools such as Eclipse, Ant, and Subversion to dissect a Tomcat distribution.
Discover the touch points between the servlet specification and a servlet container's implementation.
Acquire specialist grade skills in a range of technologies that contribute to Java server side development

Description

While Tomcat is one of the most popular servlet containers, its inner workings still remain a mystery to many developers. If you only have a superficial familiarity of how this container actually functions, much of its power remains untapped and underutilized. This book will provide you with all that you need to undertand how to effectively use Apache Tomcat. This book begins by providing detailed instructions on building a Tomcat distribution. The next few chapters introduce you to the conceptual underpinnings of web servers, the Java EE and servlet specifications, and the Tomcat container. Subsequent chapters address the key Tomcat components, taking care to provide you with the information needed to understand the internal workings of each component. Detailed examples let you walk through a Tomcat installation, stepping into key Tomcat components, as well as into your own custom servlets. During the course of the book you will encounter various structural components such as the Server and Service; containers such as the Engine, Host, Context, and Wrapper; and helpers such as the Loader, Manager, and Valve. You will also see how Tomcat implements the JNDI API to provide both a directory service for storage agnostic access to its resources, as well as a naming service that implements the Java EE Environment Naming Context. Along the way you will learn how various elements of the servlet 2.5 specification, as well as the HTTP RFCs are implemented by a servlet container. By the end of your journey, you will be able to count yourself as part of the elite minority of Java EE web developers who truly understand what goes on under the covers of a servlet container.

Who is this book for?

This book is intended for web developers who want to take their programming skills to the next level, and for server administrators who want to get a better understanding of the container software they manage. This book will give you an expert's understanding of every component that contributes to the overall request processing capabilities of Tomcat. In addition, the concepts you learn will be general enough to be carried over to other servlet containers. This book is also a good starting point for developers who want to understand how high availability and high performance software, such as Tomcat, are designed. If you wish to contribute to the Tomcat project, then this is an ideal book for you. Prior knowledge of the Java programming language, and web development on the Java platform is assumed.

What you will learn

Obtain an in-depth view of the inner workings of one of the most successful open source projects of all time.
Discover the touch points between the Java EE platform specifications and a servlet container s implementation.
Learn how to extract the most out of your Tomcat installation by understanding how its various components are implemented.
Use standard development tools such as Subversion, and Ant, and Eclipse to build a Tomcat distribution from its source code.
Execute Tomcat from inside the Eclipse IDE to watch the various components cooperate in processing a request.
Acquire specialist grade skills in a range of technologies and protocols that contribute to Java server side development.
Learn advanced software techniques such as building a custom class loader, implementing a custom protocol, and implementing JNDI-based naming and directory services.
Explore some of the performance optimizations and design patterns used in building highly scalable and performant software.

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Mike Angstadt Nov 23, 2011

The book is very wholistic in its approach to educating the reader. It provides a well-written overview of JavaEE and HTTP in Chapter 2. And whenever it mentions a technology that Tomcat uses in some way, it immediately gives a brief overview of that technology. I found this helpful because it gave me the knowledge I needed to continue reading without having to switch to a search engine. For example, in Chapter 5, when discussing the JNDI functionality that Tomcat comes packaged with, the book pauses for a moment to explain the basic concepts of JNDI itself. The book will also often describe the historical origins of the technology, like in Chapter 1, where it discusses the origins of Ant (spoiler alert: it was created as a custom build system for Tomcat).The instructions for downloading the Tomcat source code and building it are very clear. It provides a specific branch you can checkout from the Tomcat Subversion server, which is the exact version of Tomcat that was used when writing the book. This allows you to follow along without worrying about dealing with differences between what you see in the code and what you see in the book. And it also includes instructions for getting the project properly configured with Eclipse.The later chapters of the book go into a lot of detail about the various classes that make up the Tomcat source code, so be prepared for some serious code spelunking. Anyone who is interested in doing serious coding in the Tomcat codebase will gain a lot from these chapters.I'd recommend this book to people who want to work on the Tomcat source code and need something to guide them through it. I'd also recommend the book to JavaEE developers who use Tomcat on a regular basis and who want to expand their knowledge.

Amazon Verified review

I. Cherouvim Feb 15, 2010

I've been writing Java webapps and using tomcat on production for the past 5 years.This book is the best and most complete tomcat analysis book I've read. It is for developers and sysadmins, and it gives both the high level and very detailed views of the system. It starts by taking you through building your own tomcat from source (using ant and eclipse) and extensively explains the servlet spec, JNDI and all parts of the container. It also unravels a very dark corner of java (which directly relates to web containers), the classloader, in a way which does make sense.The book shows all the configuration details, in a pragmatic way. Some of the options and usage patterns are not that well written on the official tomcat documentation site.While reading it I improved my tomcat configuration on production by reducing the memory footprint of the container. I also vastly improved my understanding on the servlet spec, web containers and tomcat itself so I had a chance to improve parts of my production code.The book is very well written and the only disadvantage is that at some parts you feel like the author steps through the code describing it in English. Fortunately these parts are few and short.All in all, the amount of knowledge this book gives is great and nowhere else to be found is such cohesive way.

Mark Petrovic Nov 10, 2012

In the course of porting Jon Brisbin's excellent RabbitMQ-based Tomcat session replication manager from Tomcat v6 to Tomcat v7, I discovered Mr. Chetty's book.Here is the port: [...]While I was able to get the port to work without reading the book, I in fact read the book in parallel with the port. And in so doing I was able to acquire a deeper appreciation and understanding of Tomcat internals and how Tomcat actually works. The book is very well written, and the information is paid-out wisely to bring the reader along in their understanding.The book is based on Tomcat 6, which is not the latest major version. But that really doesn't matter. The basics of Tomcat remain the same, and the reader can fill in specific Tomcat7 information by reading the source code. Is the book perfect? Probably not. But as a glass half full person, this book easily gets the reader to the requisite 80% mark in their understanding of Tomcat internals.I recommend this book to any curious, serious developer of Java webapps that run on Tomcat. It's one of those book I expect to own for a long time, and is likely on the "loan with care" list so I don't lose track of who has it.

Tomcat 6 Developer's Guide: Understanding how a servlet container actually works will add greatly to your Java EE web programming skills, and this comprehensive guide to Tomcat is the perfect starting point.

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