JavaServer^TM Web Development Kit, Version 1.0.1

Last update to this file: October 1, 1999

Please read the License Agreement that applies to this software.

The JavaServer^TM Web Development Kit (JSWDK) is the reference implementation for the JavaServer Pages technology and the Java^TM Servlet API. This release of the JSWDK supports JSP 1.0 and the Java Servlet API 2.1.

The JSWDK contains a Web container that runs JSP files and Java servlets. The Web container has a servlet engine for developing and testing servlets, a simple HTTP Web server, and a JSP engine.

The JSWDK also includes the source files for the javax.servlet and javax.servlet.jsp packages and their Javadoc API documentation. These packages are the JavaServer Pages and Java Servlet APIs.

System Requirements

Operating System

• Windows NT 4.0 Service Pack 4
• Solaris 2.6 and 2.7
• Windows 98
• Red Hat Linux 6.0 (JDK is available at http://www.blackdown.org)

JDK version

• JDK 1.1.8
• JDK 1.2.2

Environment variables

1. Add the full path of the JDK bin directory (where the java command is located) to the PATH variable.
• For Windows NT: To set the path permanently, select Start -> Control Panel. Select System, then Environment, and look for Path in the User Variables and System Variables.

• For Window 98 and Windows 95: Open and edit the AUTOEXEC.BAT file and add or change the PATH statement. To do so, click Start-> Run and enter Sysedit.
2. If you are using JDK 1.2, you also need to do one of the following:
• Add the tools.jar file (in the JDK lib directory) file to your CLASSPATH variable.
• Set the JAVA_HOME variable to the location of the JDK directory.

Installing the JSWDK

Once you have downloaded the tar or zip file, move it to the directory where you want to install the JSWDK and extract its contents. (In Windows, simply use Explorer and double-click on the icon for the downloaded file. You will need WinZip or another compatible file utility.)

This process automatically creates a subdirectory (by default, jswdk-1.0).

Starting and Stopping the Server

• For Windows: To start the server, open the directory with Windows Explorer and double-click on STARTSERVER.BAT.

(If this doesn't work, you can try opening a DOS window and running it from there.)

To stop the server, double-click on the STOPSERVER.BAT file. For graceful shutdown, use this instead of simply closing the MS-DOS command window.

• For UNIX: Run the startserver shell script to start the server:

% startserver

Run the stopserver shell script to stop the server:

% stopserver

For graceful shutdown, use this command instead of simply killing the server process.

Accessing the Server

http://localhost:8080
http://<your-host-name>:8080

You can change the default port from 8080 - see the next section, "Configuring the Server."

Configuring the Server

The syntax of the different options is described in the file itself.

To change the default port for the Web server from 8080 to 80 (or some other number), add the port="number" statement to the <Service> tag, for example:

<WebServer id="webServer">
<Service id="service0" port="80">
<WebApplication id="examples" mapping="/examples" docBase="examples"/>
</Service>
</WebServer>

Known Bugs

1. Automatic servlet reloading is not implemented in this version of the JSWDK.
2. The JSP engine treats buffer size in characters instead of bytes. When you use the page directive with the buffer=size attribute, the size you enter is handled as a size in characters, rather than a size in kilobytes.

Bugs Fixed in This Release

This version of the JSWDK is a bug fix release, correcting the following bugs:

1. Earlier versions had a bug in handling data sent from the client to the server by an HTTP POST method. This bug caused the error message Connection reset by peer to appear in the user's Web browser. This bug has been fixed. You can now use the HTTP POST method in a JSP file to send data from an HTML form to the Web server.

2. The shell scripts startserver and stopserver, for starting and stopping the JSWDK server on UNIX systems, are no longer specific to the Korn shell. You can now run the scripts safely from any UNIX shell.

3. In earlier versions, character set encoding that you defined using <%@ page contentType="xxx" charset="xxx" %> in a JSP file was not handled correctly when the JSP page was compiled. With some character sets, this caused the JSWDK engine to stop running. This bug has been fixed. The contentType and charset attributes of the page directive now work correctly.

4. In earlier versions, JSP files with the same filename but stored in different directories were compiled to the same Java .class file, so that an existing .class file was overwritten when a new JSP file was compiled. This bug has been fixed. You can now create JSP files with the same file name in different directories.

5. In addition, this release of the JSWDK is certified safe for Y2K processing. If you use this version, you should not encounter errors related to changing dates to the year 2000.

Troubleshooting

• Out of Environment Space error message

  On Windows 95/98 systems, you may see an Out of Environment Space error message when starting the server. This happens if Windows provides too small a space for environment variables. To work around this limitation:

1. Close the DOS window (the error can corrupt its CLASSPATH variable).
2. Open a new DOS window.
3. Click on the MS-DOS icon at the top left of the window.
4. Select the Properties option.
5. Click on the Memory tab.
6. Adjust the Initial Environment drop-down box from Auto to 2816.
7. Click OK.
8. Start the server.

• Truncated file names

On Windows systems, if you do not use a standard, WinZip-compatible tool to unzip the download file, your tool may truncate file names to eight characters when it extracts the files. (For example, the startserver.bat file will now be startser.bat.) In this case, the scripts, batch files and links will not work. Make sure that your unzip utility supports file names longer than eight characters.

• Unhandled error! error message

If the JSWDK engine cannot find the tools.jar file when compiling JSP pages, it will report the following error message:

Unhandled error! You might want to consider having an 
error page to report such errors more gracefully.
Java.lang.NoClasssDefFoundError: sun/tools/javac/Main

To fix this problem, add the tools.jar file from the JDK lib directory to the CLASSPATH variable in the startserver.bat file or to the CLASSPATH environment variable.