Servlet interview questions [ Part 3 ]

1. What is difference between PrintWriter and ServletOutputStream?
PrintWriter is a character-stream class whereas ServletOutputStream is a byte-stream class. We can use PrintWriter to write character based information such as character array and String to the response whereas we can use ServletOutputStream to write byte array data to the response.
We can use ServletResponse getWriter() to get the PrintWriter instance whereas we can use ServletResponse getOutputStream() method to get the ServletOutputStream object reference.

2. Can we get PrintWriter and ServletOutputStream both in a servlet?
We can?t get instances of both PrintWriter and ServletOutputStream in a single servlet method, if we invoke both the methods; getWriter() and getOutputStream() on response; we will get java.lang.IllegalStateException at runtime with message as other method has already been called for this response.

3. What is the use of servlet wrapper classes?
Servlet HTTP API provides two wrapper classes ? HttpServletRequestWrapper and HttpServletResponseWrapper. These wrapper classes are provided to help developers with custom implementation of servlet request and response types. We can extend these classes and override only specific methods we need to implement for custom request and response objects. These classes are not used in normal servlet programming.
 
4. What is SingleThreadModel interface?
The servlet programmer should implement SingleThreadModel interface to ensure that servlet can handle only one request at a time. It is a marker interface, means have no methods.

This interface is currently deprecated since Servlet API 2.4 because it doesn't solves all the thread-safety issues such as static variable and session attributes can be accessed by multiple threads at the same time even if we have implemented the SingleThreadModel interface. So it is recommended to use other means to resolve these thread safety issues such as synchronized block etc.

5. Are Servlets Thread Safe? How to achieve thread safety in servlets?
HttpServlet init() method and destroy() method are called only once in servlet life cycle, so we don?t need to worry about their synchronization. But service methods such as doGet() or doPost() are getting called in every client request and since servlet uses multithreading, we should provide thread safety in these methods.
If there are any local variables in service methods, we don?t need to worry about their thread safety because they are specific to each thread but if we have a shared resource then we can use synchronization to achieve thread safety in servlets when working with shared resources.
The thread safety mechanisms are similar to thread safety in standalone java application.

6. What are different methods of session management in servlets?
Session is a conversional state between client and server and it can consists of multiple request and response between client and server. Since HTTP and Web Server both are stateless, the only way to maintain a session is when some unique information about the session (session id) is passed between server and client in every request and response.
Some of the common ways of session management in servlets are:
User Authentication
HTML Hidden Field
Cookies
URL Rewriting
Session Management API

7. Difference between statefull and stateless session?

8. Types of client side session is servlet?
Cookies
URL rewriting
Hidden Form Fields
Cookies:
Cookies are information that a Web server sends to a browser and that the browser returns back to web server when visiting the same Web site later.
Cookie can be saved in a browser as a key value pair
To add a cookie in browser we need to create an object for cookie class and use a HttpResponse object to send the data to browser.
To create cookie object:
    Cookie ck=new Cookie(?key?,?value?);       
To add cookie to browser
    Response.addCookie(ck); // addCookie method takes cookie objects as argument
To get or retrieve the all the cookie present in the browser we need to use a HttpRequest object
To get cookie:

    Cookie ck[]=request.getCookies();

To display cookie present in cookie array:

for(int i=0;i<ck.length;i++){
 
    String str=ck[i].getName();
     
    String value=ck[i].getValue();
     
    out.println("<b><br>Name of the Cookie :"+str);
     
    out.println("<b><br> Value of the cookie :"+value);
 
}

 
URL Rewriting:
URL rewriting is the process of sending information to another servlet or same servlet in the form of url
URL rewriting cannot be used for secure data, it will not works under post request.
URL rewriting can be used to maintain a page hits
In URL rewriting we append a identifier to the URL of next servlet or next resource. We can send parameter name/values pairs using the following format:
http://mydomain/url?name1=value&name2=value2&??
From the servlet we can use getParameter() method to obtain a parameter value.

String value1=request.getParameter("name1");
 
String value2=request.getParameter("name2");

Hidden Form fields:
            Hidden form is a form of session tracking which saves the information in client browser itself.
We uses hidden box in html to hide the session information from client.
We cannot use this type of session for secure data because  when a client views the source code of the html page the session information can be view by all.

<input type ="hidden" name ="session" value="sessionid"/>

In servlet to get session information

 String value = request.getParameter("session");

  
 
One way to support anonymous session tracking is to use hidden form fields. As the name implies, these are fields added to an HTML form that are not displayed in the client?s browser. They are sent back to the server when the form that contains them is submitted.
In case of hidden form field an invisible text field is used for maintaining state of an user.

9. Types of server side session?
  1.    HttpSession can be used to maintain token on server side.

10. What is URL Rewriting?
A rewrite engine is a software component that performs rewriting on Uniform Resource Locators, modifying their appearance. This modification is called URL rewriting. It is a way of implementing URL mapping or routing within a web application. The engine is typically a component of a web server or web application framework

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