Running Java applications from within JSP

Question

Hi Folks,
First of all, apologies if this post is either 1) in the wrong forum or 2) a horrendous mis-application of java/JSP :D
I have a java test harness application that I have created, it runs from the command line, taking two arguments (the name of the app you want to test and the location of the properties file) and it then looks up the app in the properties file and tests the application - writing results to html reports and errors to logs... all pretty standard so far.
The apps i normally test are usually on an app server (normally IBMs WAS), so I thought, why dont I create a Web Application with a nice JSP page listing all the applications that can be tested(extracted from the properties file) and allow the user to go to the jsp and just click the "test this service" button or "view results" button for any service - just to make it more manageable.
So I have created the JSP page with the list of applications, and the links to all the result.html files - so now I just need to implement the functionality to be able to hit the link "Test now" and the test harness runs in the background.
Does anyone please have any ideas?
The best i came up with was creating a link to a new jsp page that had the code on it to create the main Test Harness object and then calling the execute() method - however, when i press the link i get taken to the page but my tests arent run? (this test was run on Tomcat if that makes any difference)
Any ideas? of any better ways to approach the task?
Thanks in advance guys!!

Answer 1

Start with Java EE tutorial part II: [http://java.sun.com/javaee/5/docs/tutorial/doc/bnadp.html].
To create a Servlet you basically just extend HttpServlet and implement the appropriate methods, such as doGet() for GET requests and doPost() for POST requests. To run it, you need to define it in the web.xml and map it on an appropriate url-pattern with which you want to invoke the servlet by URL.
To fullfill your requirement, I think implementing doGet() ought to be sufficient. E.g.
yourpackage.YourServlet.javaprotected void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) {
    YourJavaClass yourJavaClass = new YourJavaClass();
    Object someResult = yourJavaClass.doSomething();
    request.setAttribute("someResult", someResult);
    request.getRequestDispatcher("yourPage.jsp").forward(request, response);
}yourPage.jsp<p>Result: ${someResult}</p>web.xml<servlet>
    <servlet-name>yourServlet</servlet-name>
    <servlet-class>yourpackage.YourServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>yourServlet</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/yourServlet</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>Invoke it by [http://localhost:8080/yourContext/yourServlet].