从JSP / Servlet应用程序公开REST接口

Question

I have created a simple Web Portal using JSP/Servlets. It is connected to MySQL Database and basically the portal is just used to manage the records in the MySQL Database.

I now want to expose REST APIs for anyone to retrieve and insert information into the MySQL database. Would I be able to do so using JSP/Servlets.

It would be great to have suggestions.

Answer 1

Lets first get some short definitions:

REST is an architecture design. You can read this clear explanation from Wikipedia . Today most REST services use JSON as a message format, but this is not mandatory neighter part of REST. You can have XML, images, etc.

Servlet is a RESTful implementation. You can extend HttpServlet in Java an implement the RESTful methods (GET, PUT, POST, DELETE). Lot of people just go with POST and GET, so it is not RESTful by definition, but it do the work.

JSP is not what you are looking for in this case. Its mostly designed for user interface, and is not the right approach to expose "API"s as services and such.

Now about your question, the answer is yes you can use Servlets, but there are better tools to implement REST today. You'll have a litte more work to set up your structure but it will be an elegant solution.

The way to go with Java is with JAX-RS , the Java Enterprise specification for RESTful Services. You can follow the official tutorial Building RESTful Web Services with JAX-RS . I highly recommend you to follow this tutorial since it will give you a good grasp over the concepts involved.

You can use Spring too: Building a RESTful Web Service . I use Jackson 2.0 with Spring and it works like a charm.

Other example here .

Answer 2

Yes, you can do this only with servlets, but this is not a great idea, because there are a lot of good frameworks to do this.

Take a look a this link Jersey