Question

In my project I’m using Servlet 3.0 and I’ve tried to use annotations.

To init the connection parameters for the DB I use this in my servlet :

@WebServlet(name = "FrontServlet", urlPatterns = {"/index"},
        initParams = {
        @WebInitParam(name = "userDB", value = "root"),
        @WebInitParam(name = "passwordDB", value = "*****")})

Now when I packaged the project in a WAR I’ve no web.xml so I can’t edit the init parameters as I used to do whith older servlet version.

My question is, can I edit my init parameters when the project is packaged in a WAR? If yes how? Otherwise what approach should I use to store my init parameters and be able to modify them in the WAR?

If possible I would like to avoid to recreate the whole web.xml with all URL-patterns, etc…

EDIT :

Finally I kept :

@WebServlet(name = "FrontServlet", urlPatterns = {"/index"})

And I load DB params using Properties, accessing the config file with getClass().getClassLoader().getResourceAsStream("servlet/config/config.ini")

Answer 1

AFAIK there is no standard way to modify the init params in runtime. Moreover, it’s a bad practice to put configuration there, especially to put there database credentials in a clear text.

Usually the best practices is to put a configuration in an external file. It may be some custom properties or xml file.

For database connection it’s common to use JNDI. So basically in the code you look for a JNDI resource, while the JNDI itself in configured at container level. Google to find a lot of examples how to configure database connection via JNDI for Jetty, Tomcat, JBoss and more.