Question

I have been searching on how to start an applet from a servlet. Everything on the web so far has been on the opposite, connecting to a servlet from an applet. I am writing a gwt/j2ee app and need to post data to a servlet, then have the servlet start an applet and pass serialized objects to the applet. The applet would then send data back the the servlet. Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You don’t and can’t start an applet with a Servlet. You just let the applet during its init() call the servlet for any data the applet needs and have the servlet return the desired data. Applet-Servlet communication can be done with help of a HTTP client in the applet. The basic Java SE API offers you java.net.URL and java.net.URLConnection for this.

InputStream response = new URL(getCodeBase(), "servletURL").openStream();
// ...

Here, servletURL should match the url-pattern of the servlet as you definied in the web.xml, e.g. /servletURL or /servletURL/*.

See also:

• How to fire and handle HTTP requests with URLConnection