Question

I am a PHP developer but am transitioning to Java. (very new to Java at this point)

Is there a way to make an ajax call to a Servlet, and respond with the output of a separate .jsp file (as opposed to html or json created directly in the Servlet)?

Here is an example of what is common practice w/ Zend Framework, which is what I would like to do with Java if possible:

public function myAjaxCallAction(){
    $this->view->someVar = 'whatever';
    $this->view->hello = 'world';
    $output = $this->view->render('someViewScript.phtml'); // the above vars are in this view
    echo $output;
}

Again very new to java, any advice pertaining to this type of situation would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

Just try to load the .jsp that you want. Normally you will use a JSP fragment (.jspf). If you want to load its contents, you can do something like:

Your page:

... content ...
<div id="container"></div>
... content ...

Javascript of the page above (using jQuery):

$(function(){
    $( "#container" ).load( "pathToYoutJsp/file.jsp", { someVar: "whatever", hello: "world" } );
});

The JSP that will be loaded will look something like:

... content ...
${param.someVar} foo foo foo ${param.hello}
... content ...