Lesson 5	Maintaining state
Objective	Write and execute a servlet that counts.

Maintaining State and Counter using Java Servlet

Servlets are marvelous for maintaining state: is this user logged in? What has this customer ordered so far? They do this with the help of a session object, which represents a single user’s interactions with the server at one time. If I load ten or twelve pages from the same server in a short period of time, that is a single session, and servlets can easily keep track of information from page to page within that session. If I come back three days later, that is a different session.
If another user is requesting pages from the same server at the same time I am, that user has a different session.

Getting a Session Object

Very often, one servlet will save information about a user in a session, and another servlet will retrieve that information. They do this by getting a session object, and calling its getValue() and putValue() methods. These methods each take the value name, a simple string, as a parameter. For example, to save 500 as a session value called Limit, I would code:

session.putValue("Limit", new Integer(500));

You use an Integer object rather than a simple int value so that the session methods can determine and convert the type more easily. To retrieve that limit from a session, within the same servlet or another, I would code:

Integer limit  = (Integer) session.getValue("Limit");
int  value = limit.intValue();

For either of these method calls to work, I need a session object. I get one from the HTTP request object that is passed to doGet(), like this:

HttpSession session = req.getSession(false);

The parameter to this call, false, instructs getSession() not to create a session if one does not exist already. This call will return null if no session exists. Here’s a typical way to set your session object:

HttpSession session = req.getSession(false);
// declare variables to hold session values
if (session == null)    {
 session = req.getSession(true); 
 // initialize variables to default values
 // store them in the session with session.putValue()
}
// get values with session.getValue()

The second call to getSession() is passed true so that a new session will be created.
Review the HTML for forms in the next lesson.

Maintaining State - Exercise

Attempt this yourself by writing a servlet that counts.
Maintaining State - Exercise