Servlet Aliasing

[Kumar Vinay]

Hi folks,
What exactly is servlet aliasing...can anybody explain me in detail....
Thanx in advance for ur effort and time
Bye
Vinay

[William Brogden]

Wit servlet aliasing the web server maps a request for a particular resource to the servlet class you create. In the servlet 2.2 API this is accomplished in the web.xml file for a particular applications.
For example, the following maps a request for "saynumb.au" to the NumberSoundServ servlet - as qualified by the full package. It also creates an initialization parameter that will be passed to the servlet init method.
<servlet><servlet-name>saynumb.au</servlet-name> <servlet-class>com.JSPbook.Chap04.NumberSoundServ</servlet-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>basepath</param-name> <param-value>c:/tomcat/webapps/Root/JSPbook/Chap04/sounds
</param-value>
</init-param>
</servlet>
Bill

------------------
author of:

• Java 2 Exam Prep
  
• Java 2 (Exam Cram)
  
• Java Developer's Guide to Servlets and JSP
  
• Java Developer's Guide to E-Commerce with XML and JS
  

[maha anna]

Kumar,
Servlet alias means you are calling a servlet with another name of your choice at the URL.
It is always good idea to keep the servlets inside packages and deploy. Assuming you have a LoginServlet kept like this.
com.company.dept.project.LoginServlet.
It need not have this much depth level. What I use is one level depth like MISApp.LoginServlet.
So when we make a request from a url we write like this.

 <A HREF="http://www.webappcabaret.com/maha/servlet/MISApp.LoginServlet" TARGET=_blank rel="nofollow">http://www.webappcabaret.com/maha/servlet/MISApp.LoginServlet</A>  

Instead of calling the Servlet with its package name like above everytime, we may choose to have a simple name like this

 <A HREF="http://www.webappcabaret.com/maha/LoginServlet" TARGET=_blank rel="nofollow">http://www.webappcabaret.com/maha/LoginServlet</A>  

This means we made an alias for MISApp.LoginServlet as just 'LoginServlet'. For this we have to edit web.xml file and add entries for LoginServlet as Bill stated above. If the servlet container supports Servlet 2.2 API web.xml is the place to write all aliases for servlets.
regds
maha anna
[This message has been edited by maha anna (edited December 09, 2000).]