Servlet Interview Questions

1. What is different between web server and

application server?

2. A web server responsibility is to handler HTTP requests from client browsers and
respond with HTML response. A web server understands HTTP language and runs
on HTTP protocol.
3. Apache Web Server is kind of a web server and then we have specific containers
that can execute servlets and JSPs known as servlet container, for example
Tomcat.
4. Application Servers provide additional features such as Enterprise JavaBeans
support, JMS Messaging support, Transaction Management etc. So we can say that
Application server is a web server with additional functionalities to help developers
with enterprise applications.

5. Which HTTP method is non-idempotent?

6. A HTTP method is said to be idempotent if it returns the same result every time.
HTTP methods GET, PUT, DELETE, HEAD, and OPTIONS are idempotent method
and we should implement our application to make sure these methods always
return same result. HTTP method POST is non-idempotent method and we should
use post method when implementing something that changes with every request.
7. For example, to access an HTML page or image, we should use GET because it
will always return the same object but if we have to save customer information to
database, we should use POST method. Idempotent methods are also known as
safe methods and we don’t care about the repetitive request from the client for safe
methods.

8. What is the difference between GET and POST

method?

1. GET is a safe method (idempotent) where POST is non-idempotent

method.
2. We can send limited data with GET method and it’s sent in the header
request URL whereas we can send large amount of data with POST
because it’s part of the body.
3. GET method is not secure because data is exposed in the URL and we
can easily bookmark it and send similar request again, POST is secure
because data is sent in request body and we can’t bookmark it.
4. GET is the default HTTP method whereas we need to specify method
as POST to send request with POST method.
5. Hyperlinks in a page uses GET method.

9. What is MIME Type?

10. The “Content-Type” response header is known as MIME Type. Server sends
MIME type to client to let them know the kind of data it’s sending. It helps client in
rendering the data for user. Some of the mostly used mime types are text/html, text/
xml, application/xml etc.
11. We can use ServletContext getMimeType() method to get the correct MIME type of
the file and use it to set the response content type. It’s very useful in downloading
file through servlet from server.

12. What is a web application and what is it’s

directory structure?

13. Web Applications are modules that run on server to provide both static and dynamic
content to the client browser. Apache web server supports PHP and we can create
web application using PHP. Java provides web application support through Servlets
and JSPs that can run in a servlet container and provide dynamic content to client
browser.
14. Java Web Applications are packaged as Web Archive (WAR) and it has a defined
structure like below image.

15.

16. Read more about web applications at Java Web Application.

17. What is a servlet?

18. Java Servlet is server side technologies to extend the capability of web servers by
providing support for dynamic response and data persistence.
19. The javax.servlet and javax.servlet.http packages provide interfaces and classes for
writing our own servlets.
20. All servlets must implement the javax.servlet.Servlet interface, which defines
servlet lifecycle methods. When implementing a generic service, we can extend
the GenericServlet class provided with the Java Servlet API. The HttpServlet class
provides methods, such as doGet() and doPost(), for handling HTTP-specific
services.
21. Most of the times, web applications are accessed using HTTP protocol and thats
why we mostly extend HttpServlet class. Servlet API hierarchy is shown in below
image.

22.

23. Read more at Servlet Tutorial.

24. What are the advantages of Servlet over CGI?

25. Servlet technology was introduced to overcome the shortcomings of CGI
technology.
1. Servlets provide better performance that CGI in terms of processing
time, memory utilization because servlets uses benefits of
multithreading and for each request a new thread is created, that is
faster than loading creating new Object for each request with CGI.
2. Servlets and platform and system independent, the web application
developed with Servlet can be run on any standard web container such
as Tomcat, JBoss, Glassfish servers and on operating systems such as
Windows, Linux, Unix, Solaris, Mac etc.
3. Servlets are robust because container takes care of life cycle of servlet
and we don’t need to worry about memory leaks, security, garbage
collection etc.
4. Servlets are maintainable and learning curve is small because all we
need to take care is business logic for our application.

26. What are common tasks performed by Servlet

Container?

27. Servlet containers are also known as web container, for example Tomcat. Some of
the important tasks of servlet container are:
1. Communication Support: Servlet Container provides easy way of
communication between web client (Browsers) and the servlets and
JSPs. Because of container, we don’t need to build a server socket to
listen for any request from web client, parse the request and generate
response. All these important and complex tasks are done by container
and all we need to focus is on business logic for the applications.
2. Lifecycle and Resource Management: Servlet Container takes care
of managing the life cycle of servlet. From the loading of servlets into
memory, initializing servlets, invoking servlet methods and to destroy
them. Container also provides utility like JNDI for resource pooling and
management.
3. Multithreading Support: Container creates new thread for every request
to the servlet and provide them request and response objects to
 process. So servlets are not initialized for each request and saves time
and memory.
4. JSP Support: JSPs doesn’t look like normal java classes but every JSP
in the application is compiled by container and converted to Servlet and
then container manages them like other servlets.
5. Miscellaneous Task: Servlet container manages the resource
pool, perform memory optimizations, execute garbage collector,
provides security configurations, support for multiple applications, hot
deployment and several other tasks behind the scene that makes a
developer life easier.

28. What is ServletConfig object?

29. javax.servlet.ServletConfig is used to pass configuration information to Servlet.

Every servlet has it’s own ServletConfig object and servlet container is responsible
for instantiating this object. We can provide servlet init parameters in web.xml file or
through use of WebInitParam annotation. We can use getServletConfig() method to
get the ServletConfig object of the servlet.

30. What is ServletContext object?

31. javax.servlet.ServletContext interface provides access to web application

parameters to the servlet. The ServletContext is unique object and available to
all the servlets in the web application. When we want some init parameters to
be available to multiple or all of the servlets in the web application, we can use
ServletContext object and define parameters in web.xml using <context-param>
element. We can get the ServletContext object via the getServletContext() method
of ServletConfig. Servlet containers may also provide context objects that are
unique to a group of servlets and which is tied to a specific portion of the URL path
 namespace of the host.
32. ServletContext is enhanced in Servlet Specs 3 to introduce methods through
which we can programmatically add Listeners and Filters and Servlet to the
application. It also provides some utility methods such as getMimeType(),
getResourceAsStream() etc.

33. What is difference between ServletConfig and

ServletContext?

34. Some of the differences between ServletConfig and ServletContext are:

1. ServletConfig is a unique object per servlet whereas ServletContext is a
unique object for complete application.
2. ServletConfig is used to provide init parameters to the servlet whereas
ServletContext is used to provide application level init parameters that
all other servlets can use.
3. We can’t set attributes in ServletConfig object whereas we can
set attributes in ServletContext that other servlets can use in their
implementation.

35. What is Request Dispatcher?

36. RequestDispatcher interface is used to forward the request to another resource that
can be HTML, JSP or another servlet in same application. We can also use this to
include the content of another resource to the response. This interface is used for
inter-servlet communication in the same context.
37. There are two methods defined in this interface:
 1. void forward(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response) –
forwards the request from a servlet to another resource (servlet, JSP
file, or HTML file) on the server.
2. void include(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response) –
includes the content of a resource (servlet, JSP page, HTML file) in the
response.
3. We can get RequestDispatcher in a servlet using ServletContext
getRequestDispatcher(String path) method. The path must begin with a
/ and is interpreted as relative to the current context root.

38. What is difference between PrintWriter and

ServletOutputStream?

39. 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.
40. We can use ServletResponse getWriter() to get the PrintWriter instance
whereas we can use ServletResponse getOutputStream() method to get the
ServletOutputStream object reference.
41. You can read more about IO in java at Java IO Tutorial.

42. Can we get PrintWriter and

ServletOutputStream both in a servlet?
43. 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 getjava.lang.IllegalStateException at runtime with message as
other method has already been called for this response.

44. How can we create deadlock situation in

servlet?

45. We can create deadlock in servlet by making a loop of method invocation, just call
doPost() method from doGet() method and doGet() method to doPost() method to
create deadlock situation in servlet.
46. Read more about deadlock in multithreading at Java Deadlock Example.

47. What is the use of servlet wrapper classes?

48. Servlet HTTP API provides two wrapper classes – HttpServletRequestWrapper

andHttpServletResponseWrapper. 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.

49. What is SingleThreadModel interface?

50. SingleThreadModel interface was provided for thread safety and it guarantees that
no two threads will execute concurrently in the servlet’s service method. However
SingleThreadModel does not solve all thread safety issues. For example, session
attributes and static variables can still be accessed by multiple requests on multiple
threads at the same time, even when SingleThreadModel servlets are used. Also
it takes out all the benefits of multithreading support of servlets, thats why this
interface is Deprecated in Servlet 2.4.

51. Do we need to override service() method?

52. When servlet container receives client request, it invokes the service() method
which in turn invokes the doGet(), doPost() methods based on the HTTP method of
request. I don’t see any use case where we would like to override service() method.
The whole purpose of service() method is to forward to request to corresponding
HTTP method implementations. If we have to do some pre-processing of request,
we can always use servlet filters and listeners.

53. Is it good idea to create servlet constructor?

54. We can define a constructor for servlet but I don’t think its of any use because
we won’t be having access to the ServletConfig object until unless servlet is
initialized by container. Ideally if we have to initialize any resource for servlet, we
should override init() method where we can access servlet init parameters using
ServletConfig object.
55. What is difference between GenericServlet and
HttpServlet?

56. GenericServlet is protocol independent implementation of Servlet interface whereas

HttpServlet is HTTP protocol specific implementation. Most of the times we use
servlet for creating web application and that’s why we extend HttpServlet class.
HttpServlet class extends GenericServlet and also provide some other methods
specific to HTTP protocol.