How to use HTTP connection instead of a stream socket

This J2ME tips illustrates a method of using HHTP connection instead of a stream socket. This code looks very similar to the socket code, but there is a striking difference. The socket code first opened an OutputStream and sent the request to the webserver before trying to read the response.

String url = "http://learnsunjava.blogspot.com/"; conn = (HttpConnection)Connector.open(url, Connector.READ_WRITE); if (conn.getResponseCode( ) == HttpConnection.HTTP_OK) { is = conn.openInputStream( ); final int MAX_LENGTH = 128; byte[] buf = new byte[MAX_LENGTH]; int total = 0; while (total <>) { int count = is.read(buf, total, MAX_LENGTH - total); if (count < 0) { break; } total += count; } is.close( ); String reply = new String(buf, 0, total); }

How to use GET and POST methods in HTTP from a MIDlet-J2ME

//This example shows how to use GET and POST methods in HTTP from a MIDlet.

import java.io.*;

import javax.microedition.io.*;

import javax.microedition.lcdui.*;

import javax.microedition.midlet.*;

public class HttpTest1 extends MIDlet {

private Display display;

public HttpTest1() {

try {

//NOTE:Comment out the functionality which you don't want to test

getBirthdayFromNameUsingGet("John");

getBirthdayFromNameUsingPost("John");

}

catch (IOException e) {

System.out.println("IOException " + e.toString());

}

}

/**

* MIDlet lifecycle functions

*/

public void startApp() { }

public void pauseApp() {

}

public void destroyApp(boolean unconditional) {

}

/**

This function connects to web server and passes the parameter name to the

target in HTTP Get request. Upon successful connection, web server returns

birthday for 'name'.

This function also calls getConnectionInformation to retrieve properties of

HTTPConnection

**/

public void getBirthdayFromNameUsingGet(String name) throws IOException {

HttpConnection httpConn = null;

String url = "http://localhost:8080/examples/servlet/GetBirthday?name=" + name;

InputStream is = null;

OutputStream os = null;

try {

// Open an HTTP Connection object

httpConn = (HttpConnection)Connector.open(url);

// Setup HTTP Request

httpConn.setRequestMethod(HttpConnection.GET);

httpConn.setRequestProperty("User-Agent",

"Profile/MIDP-1.0 Confirguration/CLDC-1.0");

// This function retrieves the information of this connection

getConnectionInformation(httpConn);

/** Initiate connection and check for the response code. If the

response code is HTTP_OK then get the content from the target

**/

int respCode = httpConn.getResponseCode();

if (respCode == httpConn.HTTP_OK) {

StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();

os = httpConn.openOutputStream();

is = httpConn.openDataInputStream();

int chr;

while ((chr = is.read()) != -1)

sb.append((char) chr);

// Web Server just returns the birthday in mm/dd/yy format.

System.out.println(name+"'s Birthday is " + sb.toString());

}

else {

System.out.println("Error in opening HTTP Connection. Error#" + respCode);

}

} finally {

if(is!= null)

is.close();

if(os != null)

os.close();

if(httpConn != null)

httpConn.close();

}

}

/**

This function connects to web server and passes the parameter name to the

target in HTTP POST request. Upon successful connection, web server returns

birthday for 'name'.

This function also calls getConnectionInformation to retrieve properties of

HTTPConnection

**/

public void getBirthdayFromNameUsingPost(String name) throws IOException {

HttpConnection httpConn = null;

String url = "http://localhost:8080/examples/servlet/GetBirthday";

InputStream is = null;

OutputStream os = null;

try {

// Open an HTTP Connection object

httpConn = (HttpConnection)Connector.open(url);

// Setup HTTP Request to POST

httpConn.setRequestMethod(HttpConnection.POST);

httpConn.setRequestProperty("User-Agent",

"Profile/MIDP-1.0 Confirguration/CLDC-1.0");

httpConn.setRequestProperty("Accept_Language","en-US");

//Content-Type is must to pass parameters in POST Request

httpConn.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");

// This function retrieves the information of this connection

getConnectionInformation(httpConn);

os = httpConn.openOutputStream();

String params;

params = "name=" + name;

os.write(params.getBytes());

/**Caution: os.flush() is controversial. It may create unexpected behavior

on certain mobile devices. Try it out for your mobile device **/

//os.flush();

// Read Response from the Server

StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();

is = httpConn.openDataInputStream();

int chr;

while ((chr = is.read()) != -1)

sb.append((char) chr);

// Web Server just returns the birthday in mm/dd/yy format.

System.out.println(name+"'s Birthday is " + sb.toString());

} finally {

if(is!= null)

is.close();

if(os != null)

os.close();

if(httpConn != null)

httpConn.close();

}

}

/*** After setup, attributes of the HttpConnection object can be retrived using

various get methods.

***/

void getConnectionInformation(HttpConnection hc) {

System.out.println("Request Method for this connection is " + hc.getRequestMethod());

System.out.println("URL in this connection is " + hc.getURL());

// It better be HTTP:)

System.out.println("Protocol for this connection is " + hc.getProtocol());

System.out.println("This object is connected to " + hc.getHost() + " host");

System.out.println("HTTP Port in use is " + hc.getPort());

System.out.println("Query parameter in this request are " + hc.getQuery());

}

}

J2EE Interview Questions

Source from: http://www.roseindia.net/

Question: What is J2EE?
Answer: J2EE Stands for Java 2 Enterprise Edition. J2EE is an environment for developing and deploying enterprise applications. J2EE specification is defined by Sun Microsystems Inc. The J2EE platform is one of the best platform for the development and deployment of enterprise applications. The J2EE platform is consists of a set of services, application programming interfaces (APIs), and protocols, which provides the functionality necessary for developing multi-tiered, web-based applications. You can download the J2EE SDK and development tools from http://java.sun.com/.

Question: What do you understand by a J2EE module?
Answer: A J2EE module is a software unit that consists of one or more J2EE components of the same container type along with one deployment descriptor of that type. J2EE specification defines four types of modules:
a) EJB
b) Web
c) application client and
d) resource adapter

In the J2EE applications modules can be deployed as stand-alone units. Modules can also be assembled into J2EE applications.

Question: Tell me something about J2EE component?
Answer: J2EE component is a self-contained functional software unit supported by a container and configurable at deployment time. The J2EE specification defines the following J2EE components:

• Application clients and applets are components that run on the client.
  
• Java servlet and JavaServer Pages (JSP) technology components are Web components that run on the server.
  
• Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) components (enterprise beans) are business components that run on the server.J2EE components are written in the Java programming language and are compiled in the same way as any program in the language. The difference between J2EE components and "standard" Java classes is that J2EE components are assembled into a J2EE application, verified to be well formed and in compliance with the J2EE specification, and deployed to production, where they are run and managed by the J2EE server or client container.

  Source: J2EE v1.4 Glossary
  

Question: What are the contents of web module?
Answer: A web module may contain:
a) JSP files
b) Java classes
c) gif and html files and
d) web component deployment descriptors

Question: Differentiate between .ear, .jar and .war files.
Answer: These files are simply zipped file using java jar tool. These files are created for different purposes. Here is the description of these files:
.jar files: These files are with the .jar extenstion. The .jar files contains the libraries, resources and accessories files like property files.
.war files: These files are with the .war extension. The war file contains the web application that can be deployed on the any servlet/jsp container. The .war file contains jsp, html, javascript and other files for necessary for the development of web applications.
.ear files: The .ear file contains the EJB modules of the application.

Question: What is the difference between Session Bean and Entity Bean?
Answer:
Session Bean: Session is one of the EJBs and it represents a single client inside the Application Server. Stateless session is easy to develop and its efficient. As compare to entity beans session beans require few server resources.

A session bean is similar to an interactive session and is not shared; it can have only one client, in the same way that an interactive session can have only one user. A session bean is not persistent and it is destroyed once the session terminates.

Entity Bean: An entity bean represents persistent global data from the database. Entity beans data are stored into database.

Question: Why J2EE is suitable for the development distributed multi-tiered enterprise applications?
Answer: The J2EE platform consists of multi-tiered distributed application model. J2EE applications allows the developers to design and implement the business logic into components according to business requirement. J2EE architecture allows the development of multi-tired applications and the developed applications can be installed on different machines depending on the tier in the multi-tiered J2EE environment . The J2EE application parts are:

a) Client-tier components run on the client machine.
b) Web-tier components run on the J2EE server.
c) Business-tier components run on the J2EE server and the
d) Enterprise information system (EIS)-tier software runs on the EIS servers

Question: Why do understand by a container?
Answer: Normally, thin-client multi-tiered applications are hard to write because they involve many lines of intricate code to handle transaction and state management, multithreading, resource pooling, and other complex low-level details. The component-based and platform-independent J2EE architecture makes J2EE applications easy to write because business logic is organized into reusable components. In addition, the J2EE server provides underlying services in the form of a container for every component type. Because you do not have to develop these services yourself, you are free to concentrate on solving the business problem at hand (Source: http://java.sun.com/j2ee/1.3/docs/tutorial/doc/Overview4.html ).

In short containers are the interface between a component and the low-level platform specific functionality that supports the component. The application like Web, enterprise bean, or application client component must be assembled and deployed on the J2EE container before executing.

Question: What are the services provided by a container?
Answer: The services provided by container are as follows:
a) Transaction management for the bean
b) Security for the bean
c) Persistence of the bean
d) Remote access to the bean
e) Lifecycle management of the bean
f) Database-connection pooling
g) Instance pooling for the bean

Question: What are types of J2EE clients?
Answer: J2EE clients are the software that access the services components installed on the J2EE container. Following are the J2EE clients:
a) Applets
b) Java-Web Start clients
c) Wireless clients
d) Web applications