{

str.append(line);

str.append("
");

}

str.append("The width is ");

str.append(width);

str.append(" and the height is ");

str.append(height);

str.append(".
");

// write output to the response object

res.setContentType("text/html");

PrintWriter out = res.getWriter();

out.println(str);

out.close();

}

}

The service() method (here called  doGet() ) always has two arguments, which are an input and 

an output object. For an HTTP servlet, those objects are the HTTP request and the HTTP 

response. The HTTP request object passes all arguments to the servlet that were received by 

the Web server with the request. The response object contains a PrintWriter stream to hold the 

response that is generated by the servlet. 

The simple servlet shown above reads two parameters width  and height from the request 

object.  Then, it draws a rectangle of these dimensions to a string buffer. Finally, it writes the 

string buffer containing the rectangle to the response object. 

While this servlet does not seem particularly useful, and the same functionality could be 

achieved through some browser side scripting, it does already show some of the servlet 

architecture's power: The doGet() method uses fill(char[ ] a, char val) of the Java Arrays 

package. All of Java's extensive library packages can be accessed through servlets, as well as 

any other classes or methods available on the server (custom classes, J2EE beans, etc.).  

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