CHAPTER

3

The JSP Container

This chapter provides details on the contracts between a JSP container and a JSP page. 

This chapter is independent on the Scripting Language used in the JSP page. Chapter 4 

provides the details specific to when the 

language

 directive has  java  as its value.

This chapter also presents the precompilation protocol (see Section 3.4).

JSP page implementation classes should use the JspFactory and PageContext classes so they 

will take advantage of platform specific implementations.

3.1

The JSP Page Model

As indicated in Section 1.4,  Overview of JSP Page Semantics , a JSP page is executed by a 

JSP container, which is installed on a Web Server or Web enabled Application Server. The 

JSP container delivers requests from a client to a JSP page and responses from the JSP page 

to the client. The semantic model underlying JSP pages is that of a Servlet: a JSP page 

describes how to create a 

response

 object from a 

request

 object for a given protocol, possibly 

creating and/or using in the process some other objects. A JSP page may also indicate how 

some events (in JSP 1.1 only 

init

 and 

destroy

 events) are to be handled.

The Protocol Seen by the Web Server

The entity that processes 

request

 objects creating 

response

 objects should behave as if it were 

a Java technology based class; in this specification we will simply assume it is so. This class 

must implement the Servlet protocol. It is the role of the JSP container to first locate the 

appropriate instance of such a class and then to deliver requests to it according to the Servlet 

protocol. As indicated elsewhere, a JSP container may need to create such a class 

dynamically from the JSP page source before delivering a request and response objects to it.

 The JSP Container

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