6. JavaServer Page Implicit Objects

Objective

Implicit objects are a set of Java objects that the JSP Container makes available to developers in each page. These objects may be accessed as built-in variables via scripting elements and can also be accessed programmatically by JavaBeans and Servlets.

Overview

These objects will be automatically instantiated under specific variable names hence the name implicit. Furthermore, as summarized below, each object must adhere to a specific Java class or interface definition.

We have already met one of these objects already - the out object in which we used the println() method to add text to the output stream.

Object	Class or Interface	Description
page	jsp.HttpJspPage	Page's servlet instance
config	ServletConfig	Servlet configuration information
pageContext	jsp.pageContext	Provides access to all the namespaces associated with a JSP page and access to several page attributes
request	http.HttpServletRequest	Data included with the HTTP Request
response	http.HttpServletResponse	HTTP Response data, e.g. cookies
out	jsp.JspWriter	Output stream for page context
session	http.HttpSession	User specific session data
application	ServletContext	Data shared by all application pages

Of these the first three are rarely used. The application, session and request implicit objects have the additional ability to hold arbitrary values. By setting and getting attribute values these objects are able to share information between several JSP pages. This will be discussed later.

Request Object

The request object retrieves the values that the client browser passed to the server during an HTTP request such as headers, cookies or parameters associated with the request. Among the most common use of the request object is to obtain parammeter or query string values. The following demo illustrates how to use the request object for parsing form data.

Demo

Servlet Class

javax.servlet.HttpServletRequest

The following table summarises the most useful methods available to the request object. For more details consult the Servlet API.

Method	Description
getParameter(String name)	Returns the value of a request parameter as a String, or null if the parameter does not exist.
getParameterNames()	Returns an Enumeration of String objects containing the names of the parameters contained in this request.
getParameterValues(String name)	Returns an array of String objects containing all of the values the given request parameter has, or null if the parameter does not exist.
getCookies()	Gets the array of cookies found in this request. See below for more details on working with cookies.
getQueryString()	Gets any query string that is part of the HTTP request URI.
getRequestURI()	Gets the URI to the current JSP page.
getHeaderNames()	Returns an enumerator of all HTTP header names.
getHeader(String hdr)	Returns the value of an HTTP header such as "QUERY_STRING" or "URL". The method getHeaderNames() can be used to determine what headers are available. See example below.
getAttribute(String)	Retrives the object associated with the named attribute.
getAttributeNames()	Retrives the names of all attributes currently associated with the session.
setAttribute(String, object)	Sets the object to the named attribute. attribute created if it doesn't exist.
removeAttribute(String)	Removes the object bound with the specified name from this session.

Cookie Class

The getCookies() method of the request object returns an array of Cookie objects. Cookies are used to allow web browsers to hold small amounts of information or state data associated with a user's web browsing. Common applications for cookies include storing user preferences, automating low security user "sign on" facilities, and helping collect data used for "shopping cart" style applications.

Cookies are named and have a single value. They may have optional attributes, including a comment presented to the user, path and domain qualifiers for which hosts see the cookie, a maximum age, and a version.

Constructor Summary

The following constructs a cookie with a specified name and value.

Cookie(java.lang.String name, java.lang.String value)

See the following section on the response object on how to create cookies.

Cookie objects have the following methods.

Method	Description
getComment()	Returns the comment describing the purpose of this cookie, or null if no such comment has been defined.
getMaxAge()	Returns the maximum specified age of the cookie.
getName()	Returns the name of the cookie.
getPath()	Returns the prefix of all URLs for which this cookie is targetted.
getValue()	Returns the value of the cookie.
setComment(String)	If a web browser presents this cookie to a user, the cookie's purpose will be described using this comment.
setMaxAge(int)	Sets the maximum age of the cookie. The cookie will expire after that many seconds have passed. Negative values indicate the default behaviour: the cookie is not stored persistently, and will be deleted when the user web browser exits. A zero value causes the cookie to be deleted
setPath(String)	This cookie should be presented only with requests beginning with this URL.
setValue(String)	Sets the value of the cookie. Values with various special characters (white space, brackets and parentheses, the equals sign, comma, double quote, slashes, question marks, the "at" sign, colon, and semicolon) should be avoided. Empty values may not behave the same way on all browsers.

Request Object Examples

The following example obtains a list of available cookies.

  Cookie[] myCookies = request.getCookies();

  for(int n=0; n < myCookies.length; n++)
  {
    out.print(myCookies[n].getName() + " ");
    out.print(myCookies[n].getValue() + "<BR>");
  }

This example generates a table of HTTP headers and their respective values.

<table border=1 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=2>
<%
  String strHeaderName = "";
  for(Enumeration e = request.getHeaderNames();
                                   e.hasMoreElements() ;)
  {
    strHeaderName = (String)e.nextElement();
%>
    <tr>
      <td><%= strHeaderName %></td>
      <td><%= request.getHeader(strHeaderName)%> </td>
    </tr>
<%
  }
%>
</table>

Workshop

The following workshop looks at using the request and response objects.

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