Who wants to help the rookie? MY FIRST SERVELT

Question

Okay here'm my problem
Number one I've only seen a few functioning servlets and am feeling totally out of my depth here trying to write one. This is what I need to do:
I am creating a web site that has the following basic structure:
html code
html code
html code
java GUI
html code
html code
java GUI
I need to take information from the two GUI's and pass them to a separate class where the logic of the web site can work on them. I was thinking of declaring a variable in the servlet and passing it into the GUI to assign it variables but I realized I had absolutely no clue whether or not you could even declare variables in a servlet. If someone could offer me some advice? Maybe tell me the basics of sefvlet writing? I'm in a real bind here!

Answer 1

Ok, rookie :)
Imagine a servlet as just a regular java class that happens to be able to be called from a webpage using Jakarta-Tomcat or one of the other JSP/Servlet engines out there. If you are familiar with server-side programming then passing information from a Servlet to your GUI should be easy. As for passing info from a GUI to a servlet, I'm not too sure how, but that's just because I haven't written many applets in Java yet. I suggest highly "Using Java Server Pages and Servlets Special Edition" from Que as a good reference book for a technically minded programmer starting in Servlets. Now, enough of the rookie-speak, and on to the problem. If you want to pass information from a servlet to an applet, there are probably many ways to do this, but the first way I can think of is to:
a) create a servlet from scratch.
b) In the doGet() or doPost() methods, instantiate any variables you need to pass.
c) Attach these variables to the datastream using the method .setAttribute() in the HttpServletRequest object
d) Redirect your page to the page containing the <APPLET> tag using the following line:
getServletContext().getRequestDispatcher(URL).forward(request,response);     
e) Inside your page with the <APPLET>, use <% String blah = (String) request.getAttribute("Whatever"); %>
f) To reference the passed variable, use <%=blah%> and it will output a string in that place.
g) MAKE SURE YOU RENAME THAT PAGE FROM *.html to *.jsp IF IT HAS <% %> tags.
Thats about all the help I can give online.....if I've totally confused you, try looking in that book. It's really helpful....
Dan from Canada