So I just finished learning JDBC this weekend and have successfully transferred my code

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Asked: June 12, 20262026-06-12T16:52:22+00:00 2026-06-12T16:52:22+00:00

So I just finished learning JDBC this weekend and have successfully transferred my code

0

So I just finished learning JDBC this weekend and have successfully transferred my code from the main method into an MVC app. The purpose of this application is to hold a roster of players and display a users credentials if requested. The program works great and when I request a url like…

http://localhost:8084/gmustudent/players?id=1

I get the correct output for that player! The problem is I am performing the database connection within my PlayersDAO class and I assume that this is not the “best” way to do this. So I have two questions.

Is there a way to perform the database connection within the web.xml
file or some other file so that when the server is initially started it will
immediately perform the connection to the database and be ready to
query when asked?
And is this actually a better alternative to having the connection in the DAO or would this have unforeseen negative drawbacks. AKA would a constant connection to my database be exactly what I do not want?

Any comments or links would be greatly appreciated. And I’ll share the code I currently have for my DAO class so that you can see what I have so far. Thank you all!

package com.jdbc.test;

import java.sql.SQLException;
import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.Statement;
import java.sql.ResultSet;
import java.sql.DriverManager;

public class PlayersDAO 
{
    public static Players viewPlayer(int id) throws SQLException
    {
        Connection connection = null;
        Statement statement = null;
        ResultSet resultSet = null;
        Players playerObject = null;

        try
        {
            String url = "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/gmustudent";
            String username = "root";
            String password = "root";

            try
            {
                Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver");
            }
            catch(ClassNotFoundException error)
            {
                System.out.println("Error: " + error.getMessage());
            }

            connection = DriverManager.getConnection(url, username, password);
            statement = connection.createStatement();
            resultSet = statement.executeQuery("SELECT * FROM players WHERE id = " + id);

            if(resultSet.next())
                playerObject = new Players(resultSet.getLong("id"), resultSet.getString("name"), resultSet.getString("position"), resultSet.getString("height"), resultSet.getString("year"), resultSet.getString("hometown"), resultSet.getString("highschool"), resultSet.getString("headshot"));   
        }
        finally
        {
            if (connection != null) try{connection.close();} catch(SQLException ignore) {}
            if (statement != null) try{statement.close();} catch(SQLException ignore) {}
            if (resultSet != null) try{resultSet.close();} catch(SQLException ignore) {}
        }

        return playerObject;
    }
}