Groovy Goodness: Using the ServletCategory

In the groovy.servlet package we can find the class ServletCategory. We can use this class to access attributes on the servlet context, page context, request and session with the dot notation. The methods putAt and getAt are implemented in this class for all four objects. If we write Groovy code in the context of these object we can use the ServletCategory to make the code more Groovy.

In the following sample we write two servlets that use the ServletCategory to write and read attribute values. We compile the code to Java classes to get executable servlet. Finally we write a Groovy script to run Jetty with our servlets.

// File: Start.groovy
import javax.servlet.http.*
import javax.servlet.*
import groovy.servlet.ServletCategory

class Start extends HttpServlet {
    def application 
    
    void init(ServletConfig config) {
        super.init(config)
        application = config.servletContext
        use(ServletCategory) {
            application.author = 'mrhaki'
        }
    }
    
    void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletRespons response) {
        def session = request.session
        use (ServletCategory) {
            if (session.counter) {  // We can use . notation to access session attribute.
                session.counter++  // We can use . notation to set value for session attribute.
            } else {
                session.counter = 1
            }
            
            request.pageTitle = 'Groovy Rocks!'
        }
        application.getRequestDispatcher('/output').forward(request, response)
    }
}

// File: Output.groovy
import javax.servlet.http.*
import javax.servlet.*
import groovy.xml.*
import groovy.servlet.ServletCategory

class Output extends HttpServlet {
    def context 
    
    void init(ServletConfig config) {
        super.init(config)
        context = config.servletContext
    }
    
    void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletRespons reponse) {
        def html = new MarkupBuilder(response.writer)
        def session = request.session
        
        use(ServletCategory) {
            html.html {
                head {
                    title request.pageTitle
                }
                body {
                    h1 request.pageTitle 
                    h2 "$context.version written by $context.author"
                    p "You have requested this page $session.counter times."
                }
            }
        }
        
    }
}

// File: run.groovy
import org.mortbay.jetty.*
import org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.*
import groovy.servlet.*

@Grab(group='org.mortbay.jetty', module='jetty-embedded', version='6.1.14')
def startJetty() {
    def jetty = new Server(9090)
    def context = new Context(jetty, '/', Context.SESSIONS)
    context.resourceBase = '.'
    context.addServlet Start, '/start'
    context.addServlet Output, '/output'
    context.setAttribute 'version', '1.0'
    jetty.start()
}

startJetty()

In our web browser we open http://localhost:9090/start and get the following output: