Question

When a user hits a particular internal URL I need to return some html that is created dynamically.

Some back end services will be called to genrated a list of keys which is then used to generated a list of html
href links which are displayed to the user.

For this I am considering using a servlet. Is this a good methodology ?
Since servlets have been around for some time maybe there are newer/better ways of implementing this ?

Answer 1

There are tons of solutions, most of them (in Java) being based on the servlet API. If you use Spring already, Spring has a module called Spring MVC, which is a framework based on the servlet API to create web applications, based on the MVC pattern:

• Model holding the data from the database
• View (implemented, most of the time, using JSPs) generating markup based on the data contained in the model
• Controller getting the data from the database, and dispatching to the appropriate view

This is a good pattern used by most web frameworks, but every one has its own way of doing, strengths and weaknesses.

You could do with a simple servlet, but generating markup from a servlet is ugly. That’s why servlets are usually used in combinations with JSPs, following the MVC pattern. You could implement a micro-MVC framework by yourself, using only servlets and JSPs, but Spring-MVC and other frameworks offer so many additional advanteges that the investment is worth it. I personally like Stripes very much, and it’s very simple.