Servlet Interview Questions

1. What is different between web server and application server?

2. Which HTTP method is non-idempotent?
3. What is the difference between GET and POST method?
4. What is MIME Type?
5. What is a web application and what is it’s directory structure?
6. What is a servlet?
7. What are the advantages of Servlet over CGI?
8. What are common tasks performed by Servlet Container?
9. What is ServletConfig object?
10. What is ServletContext object?
11. What is difference between ServletConfig and ServletContext?
12. What is Request Dispatcher?
13. What is difference between PrintWriter and ServletOutputStream?
14. Can we get PrintWriter and ServletOutputStream both in a servlet?
15. How can we create deadlock situation in servlet?
16. What is the use of servlet wrapper classes?
17. What is SingleThreadModel interface?
18. Do we need to override service() method?
19. Is it good idea to create servlet constructor?
20. What is difference between GenericServlet and HttpServlet?
21. What is the inter-servlet communication?
22. Are Servlets Thread Safe? How to achieve thread safety in servlets?
23. What is servlet attributes and their scope?
24. How do we call one servlet from another servlet?
25. How can we invoke another servlet in a different application?
26. What is difference between ServletResponse sendRedirect() and RequestDispatcher forward()
method?
27. Why HttpServlet class is declared abstract?
28. What are the phases of servlet life cycle?
29. What are life cycle methods of a servlet?
30. why we should override only no-agrs init() method.
31. What is URL Encoding?
32. What are different methods of session management in servlets?
33. What is URL Rewriting?
34. How does Cookies work in Servlets?
35. How to notify an object in session when session is invalidated or timed-out?
36. What is the difference between encodeRedirectUrl and encodeURL?
37. Why do we have servlet filters?
38. What is the effective way to make sure all the servlets are accessible only when user has a valid
session?
39. Why do we have servlet listeners?
40. How to handle exceptions thrown by application with another servlet?
41. What is a deployment descriptor?
42. How to make sure a servlet is loaded at the application startup?
43. How to get the actual path of servlet in server?
44. How to get the server information in a servlet?
45. Write a servlet to upload file on server.
46. How do we go with database connection and log4j integration in servlet?
47. How to get the IP address of client in servlet?
48. What are important features of Servlet 3?
49. What are different ways for servlet authentication?
50. How can we achieve transport layer security for our web application?

Servlet Interview Questions and Answers

1. What is different between web server and application server?

A web server responsibility is to handler HTTP requests from client browsers and respond with HTML
response. A web server understands HTTP language and runs on HTTP protocol.
Apache Web Server is kind of a web server and then we have specific containers that can execute
 servlets and JSPs known as servlet container, for example Tomcat.
Application Servers provide additional features such as Enterprise JavaBeans support, JMS Messaging
support, Transaction Management etc. So we can say that Application server is a web server with
additional functionalities to help developers with enterprise applications.

2. Which HTTP method is non-idempotent?

A HTTP method is said to be idempotent if it returns the same result every time. HTTP methods GET,
PUT, DELETE, HEAD, and OPTIONS are idempotent method and we should implement our application to
make sure these methods always return same result. HTTP method POST is non-idempotent method and
we should use post method when implementing something that changes with every request.

For example, to access an HTML page or image, we should use GET because it will always return the
same object but if we have to save customer information to database, we should use POST method.
Idempotent methods are also known as safe methods and we don’t care about the repetitive request from
the client for safe methods.

3.What is the difference between GET and POST method?

 GET is a safe method (idempotent) where POST is non-idempotent method.
 We can send limited data with GET method and it’s sent in the header request URL whereas
we can send large amount of data with POST because it’s part of the body.
 GET method is not secure because data is exposed in the URL and we can easily bookmark it
and send similar request again, POST is secure because data is sent in request body and we
can’t bookmark it.
 GET is the default HTTP method whereas we need to specify method as POST to send request
with POST method.
 Hyperlinks in a page uses GET method.

4.What is MIME Type?

The “Content-Type” response header is known as MIME Type. Server sends MIME type to client to let
them know the kind of data it’s sending. It helps client in rendering the data for user. Some of the mostly
used mime types are text/html, text/xml, application/xml etc.

We can use ServletContext getMimeType() method to get the correct MIME type of the file and use it to set
the response content type. It’s very useful in downloading file through servlet from server.

5.What is a web application and what is it’s directory structure?

Web Applications are modules that run on server to provide both static and dynamic content to the client
browser. Apache web server supports PHP and we can create web application using PHP. Java provides
web application support through Servlets and JSPs that can run in a servlet container and provide dynamic
content to client browser.

Java Web Applications are packaged as Web Archive (WAR) and it has a defined structure like below
image.
6.What is a servlet?
Java Servlet is server side technologies to extend the capability of web servers by providing support for
dynamic response and data persistence.

The javax.servlet and javax.servlet.http packages provide interfaces and classes for writing our own
servlets.
All servlets must implement the javax.servlet.Servlet interface, which defines servlet lifecycle methods.
When implementing a generic service, we can extend the GenericServlet class provided with the Java
Servlet API. The HttpServlet class provides methods, such as doGet() and doPost(), for handling HTTP-
specific services.

Most of the times, web applications are accessed using HTTP protocol and thats why we mostly extend
HttpServlet class. Servlet API hierarchy is shown in below image.

7.What are the advantages of Servlet over CGI?

Servlet technology was introduced to overcome the shortcomings of CGI technology.

 Servlets provide better performance that CGI in terms of processing time, memory utilization
because servlets uses benefits of multithreading and for each request a new thread is created,
that is faster than loading creating new Object for each request with CGI.
 Servlets and platform and system independent, the web application developed with Servlet can
be run on any standard web container such as Tomcat, JBoss, Glassfish servers and on
operating systems such as Windows, Linux, Unix, Solaris, Mac etc.
 Servlets are robust because container takes care of life cycle of servlet and we don’t need to
worry about memory leaks, security, garbage collection etc.
 Servlets are maintainable and learning curve is small because all we need to take care is
business logic for our application.
8.What are common tasks performed by Servlet Container?
Servlet containers are also known as web container, for example Tomcat. Some of the important tasks of
servlet container are:

 Communication Support: Servlet Container provides easy way of communication between

web client (Browsers) and the servlets and JSPs. Because of container, we don’t need to build
a server socket to listen for any request from web client, parse the request and generate
response. All these important and complex tasks are done by container and all we need to
focus is on business logic for the applications.
 Lifecycle and Resource Management: Servlet Container takes care of managing the life cycle
of servlet. From the loading of servlets into memory, initializing servlets, invoking servlet
methods and to destroy them. Container also provides utility like JNDI for resource pooling and
management.
 Multithreading Support: Container creates new thread for every request to the servlet and
provide them request and response objects to process. So servlets are not initialized for each
request and saves time and memory.
 JSP Support: JSPs doesn’t look like normal java classes but every JSP in the application is
compiled by container and converted to Servlet and then container manages them like other
servlets.
 Miscellaneous Task: Servlet container manages the resource pool, perform memory
optimizations, execute garbage collector, provides security configurations, support for multiple
applications, hot deployment and several other tasks behind the scene that makes a developer
life easier.

9.What is ServletConfig object?

javax.servlet.ServletConfig is used to pass configuration information to Servlet. Every servlet has
it’s own ServletConfig object and servlet container is responsible for instantiating this object. We can
provide servlet init parameters in web.xml file or through use of WebInitParam annotation. We can use
getServletConfig() method to get the ServletConfig object of the servlet.

10.What is ServletContext object?

javax.servlet.ServletContext interface provides access to web application parameters to the
servlet. The ServletContext is unique object and available to all the servlets in the web application. When
we want some init parameters to be available to multiple or all of the servlets in the web application, we can
use ServletContext object and define parameters in web.xml using <context-param> element. We can get
the ServletContext object via the getServletContext() method of ServletConfig. Servlet containers may also
provide context objects that are unique to a group of servlets and which is tied to a specific portion of the
URL path namespace of the host.

ServletContext is enhanced in Servlet Specs 3 to introduce methods through which we can

programmatically add Listeners and Filters and Servlet to the application. It also provides some utility
methods such as getMimeType(), getResourceAsStream() etc.

11.What is difference between ServletConfig and ServletContext?

Some of the differences between ServletConfig and ServletContext are:

 ServletConfig is a unique object per servlet whereas ServletContext is a unique object for
complete application.
 ServletConfig is used to provide init parameters to the servlet whereas ServletContext is used
to provide application level init parameters that all other servlets can use.
 We can’t set attributes in ServletConfig object whereas we can set attributes in ServletContext
that other servlets can use in their implementation.
12.What is Request Dispatcher?
RequestDispatcher interface is used to forward the request to another resource that can be HTML, JSP or
another servlet in same application. We can also use this to include the content of another resource to the
response. This interface is used for inter-servlet communication in the same context.

There are two methods defined in this interface:

13. void forward(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response) – forwards the request from
a servlet to another resource (servlet, JSP file, or HTML file) on the server.
14. void include(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response) – includes the content of a
resource (servlet, JSP page, HTML file) in the response.

We can get RequestDispatcher in a servlet using ServletContext getRequestDispatcher(String path)

method. The path must begin with a / and is interpreted as relative to the current context root.

13.What is difference between PrintWriter and

ServletOutputStream?
PrintWriter is a character-stream class whereas ServletOutputStream is a byte-stream class. We can use
PrintWriter to write character based information such as character array and String to the response
whereas we can use ServletOutputStream to write byte array data to the response.

We can use ServletResponse getWriter() to get the PrintWriter instance whereas we can use
ServletResponse getOutputStream() method to get the ServletOutputStream object reference.

14.Can we get PrintWriter and ServletOutputStream both in a

servlet?
We can’t get instances of both PrintWriter and ServletOutputStream in a single servlet method, if we invoke
both the methods; getWriter() and getOutputStream() on response; we will
get java.lang.IllegalStateException at runtime with message as other method has already been
called for this response.

15.How can we create deadlock situation in servlet?

We can create deadlock in servlet by making a loop of method invocation, just call doPost() method from
doGet() method and doGet() method to doPost() method to create deadlock situation in servlet.

16.What is the use of servlet wrapper classes?

Servlet HTTP API provides two wrapper classes
– HttpServletRequestWrapper and HttpServletResponseWrapper. These wrapper classes are
provided to help developers with custom implementation of servlet request and response types.

We can extend these classes and override only specific methods we need to implement for custom request
and response objects. These classes are not used in normal servlet programming.

17.What is SingleThreadModel interface?

SingleThreadModel interface was provided for thread safety and it guarantees that no two threads will
execute concurrently in the servlet’s service method. However SingleThreadModel does not solve all
thread safety issues. For example, session attributes and static variables can still be accessed by multiple
requests on multiple threads at the same time, even when SingleThreadModel servlets are used. Also it
takes out all the benefits of multithreading support of servlets, thats why this interface is Deprecated in
Servlet 2.4.
18.Do we need to override service() method?
When servlet container receives client request, it invokes the service() method which in turn invokes the
doGet(), doPost() methods based on the HTTP method of request. I don’t see any use case where we
would like to override service() method. The whole purpose of service() method is to forward to request to
corresponding HTTP method implementations. If we have to do some pre-processing of request, we can
always use servlet filters and listeners.

19.Is it good idea to create servlet constructor?

We can define a constructor for servlet but I don’t think its of any use because we won’t be having access
to the ServletConfig object until unless servlet is initialized by container. Ideally if we have to initialize any
resource for servlet, we should override init() method where we can access servlet init parameters using
ServletConfig object.

20.What is difference between GenericServlet and HttpServlet?

GenericServlet is protocol independent implementation of Servlet interface whereas HttpServlet is HTTP
protocol specific implementation. Most of the times we use servlet for creating web application and that’s
why we extend HttpServlet class. HttpServlet class extends GenericServlet and also provide some other
methods specific to HTTP protocol.

21.What is the inter-servlet communication?

When we want to invoke another servlet from a servlet service methods, we use inter-servlet
communication mechanisms. We can invoke another servlet using RequestDispatcher forward() and
include() methods and provide additional attributes in request for other servlet use.

22.Are Servlets Thread Safe? How to achieve thread safety in

servlets?
HttpServlet init() method and destroy() method are called only once in servlet life cycle, so we don’t need to
worry about their synchronization. But service methods such as doGet() or doPost() are getting called in
every client request and since servlet uses multithreading, we should provide thread safety in these
methods.

If there are any local variables in service methods, we don’t need to worry about their thread safety
because they are specific to each thread but if we have a shared resource then we can use
synchronization to achieve thread safety in servlets when working with shared resources.

The thread safety mechanisms are similar to thread safety in standalone java application, read more about
them at Thread Safety in Java.

23.What is servlet attributes and their scope?

Servlet attributes are used for inter-servlet communication, we can set, get and remove attributes in web
application. There are three scopes for servlet attributes – request scope, session scope and application
scope.

ServletRequest, HttpSession and ServletContext interfaces provide methods to get/set/remove attributes

from request, session and application scope respectively.

Servlet attributes are different from init parameters defined in web.xml for ServletConfig or ServletContext.

24.How do we call one servlet from another servlet?

We can use RequestDispatcher forward() method to forward the processing of a request to another servlet.
If we want to include the another servlet output to the response, we can use RequestDispatcher include()
method.

25.How can we invoke another servlet in a different application?

We can’t use RequestDispatcher to invoke servlet from another application because it’s specific for the
application. If we have to forward the request to a resource in another application, we can use
ServletResponse sendRedirect() method and provide complete URL of another servlet. This sends the
response to client with response code as 302 to forward the request to another URL. If we have to send
some data also, we can use cookies that will be part of the servlet response and sent in the request to
another servlet.

26.What is difference between ServletResponse sendRedirect()

and RequestDispatcher forward() method?
1. RequestDispatcher forward() is used to forward the same request to another resource whereas
ServletResponse sendRedirect() is a two step process. In sendRedirect(), web application
returns the response to client with status code 302 (redirect) with URL to send the request. The
request sent is a completely new request.
2. forward() is handled internally by the container whereas sednRedirect() is handled by browser.
3. We should use forward() when accessing resources in the same application because it’s faster
than sendRedirect() method that required an extra network call.
4. In forward() browser is unaware of the actual processing resource and the URL in address bar
remains same whereas in sendRedirect() URL in address bar change to the forwarded
resource.
5. forward() can’t be used to invoke a servlet in another context, we can only use sendRedirect() in
this case.

27.Why HttpServlet class is declared abstract?

HttpServlet class provide HTTP protocol implementation of servlet but it’s left abstract because there is no
implementation logic in service methods such as doGet() and doPost() and we should override at least one
of the service methods. That’s why there is no point in having an instance of HttpServlet and is declared
abstract class.

28.What are the phases of servlet life cycle?

We know that Servlet Container manages the life cycle of Servlet, there are four phases of servlet life
cycle.

a. Servlet Class Loading – When container receives request for a servlet, it first loads the class
into memory and calls it’s default no-args constructor.
b. Servlet Class Initialization – Once the servlet class is loaded, container initializes the
ServletContext object for the servlet and then invoke it’s init method by passing servlet config
object. This is the place where a servlet class transforms from normal class to servlet.
c. Request Handling – Once servlet is initialized, its ready to handle the client requests. For every
client request, servlet container spawns a new thread and invokes the service() method by
passing the request and response object reference.
d. Removal from Service – When container stops or we stop the application, servlet container
destroys the servlet class by invoking it’s destroy() method.

29.What are life cycle methods of a servlet?

Servlet Life Cycle consists of three methods:

e. public void init(ServletConfig config) – This method is used by container to initialize the servlet,
this method is invoked only once in the lifecycle of servlet.
 f. public void service(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response) – This method is called
once for every request, container can’t invoke service() method until unless init() method is
executed.
g. public void destroy() – This method is invoked once when servlet is unloaded from memory.

30.why we should override only no-agrs init() method.

If we have to initialize some resource before we want our servlet to process client requests, we should
override init() method. If we override init(ServletConfig config) method, then the first statement should be
super(config) to make sure superclass init(ServletConfig config) method is invoked first. That’s why
GenericServlet provides another helper init() method without argument that get’s called at the end of
init(ServletConfig config) method. We should always utilize this method for overriding init() method to avoid
any issues as we may forget to add super() call in overriding init method with ServletConfig argument.

31.What is URL Encoding?

URL Encoding is the process of converting data into CGI form so that it can travel across the network
without any issues. URL Encoding strip the white spaces and replace special characters with escape
characters. We can use java.net.URLEncoder.encode(String str, String unicode) to encode a String. URL
Decoding is the reverse process of encoding and we can use java.net.URLDecoder.decode(String str,
String unicode) to decode the encoded string. For example “Pankaj’s Data” is encoded to “Pankaj
%27s+Data”.

32.What are different methods of session management in

servlets?
Session is a conversional state between client and server and it can consists of multiple request and
response between client and server. Since HTTP and Web Server both are stateless, the only way to
maintain a session is when some unique information about the session (session id) is passed between
server and client in every request and response.

Some of the common ways of session management in servlets are:

h. User Authentication
i. HTML Hidden Field
j. Cookies
k. URL Rewriting
l. Session Management API

33.What is URL Rewriting?

We can use HttpSession for session management in servlets but it works with Cookies and we can disable
the cookie in client browser. Servlet API provides support for URL rewriting that we can use to manage
session in this case.

The best part is that from coding point of view, it’s very easy to use and involves one step – encoding the
URL. Another good thing with Servlet URL Encoding is that it’s a fallback approach and it kicks in only if
browser cookies are disabled.

We can encode URL with HttpServletResponse encodeURL() method and if we have to redirect the
request to another resource and we want to provide session information, we can use encodeRedirectURL()
method.

34.How does Cookies work in Servlets?

Cookies are used a lot in web client-server communication, it’s not something specific to java. Cookies are
text data sent by server to the client and it gets saved at the client local machine.
Servlet API provides cookies support through javax.servlet.http.Cookie class that implements Serializable
and Cloneable interfaces.

HttpServletRequest getCookies() method is provided to get the array of Cookies from request, since there
is no point of adding Cookie to request, there are no methods to set or add cookie to request.

Similarly HttpServletResponse addCookie(Cookie c) method is provided to attach cookie in response

header, there are no getter methods for cookie.

35.How to notify an object in session when session is invalidated

or timed-out?
If we have to make sure an object gets notified when session is destroyed, the object should
implement javax.servlet.http.HttpSessionBindingListener interface. This interface defines
two callback methods – valueBound() and valueUnbound() that we can define to implement processing
logic when the object is added as attribute to the session and when session is destroyed.

Recommended reading Servlet Listener.

36.What is the difference between encodeRedirectUrl and

encodeURL?
HttpServletResponse provide method to encode URL in HTML hyperlinks so that the special characters
and white spaces are escaped and append session id to the URL. It behaves similar to URLEncoder
encode method with additional process to append jsessionid parameter at the end of the URL.

However HttpServletResponse encodeRedirectUrl() method is used specially for encode the redirect URL
in response.

So when we are providing URL rewriting support, for hyperlinks in HTML response, we should use
encodeURL() method whereas for redirect URL we should use encodeRedirectUrl() method.

37.Why do we have servlet filters?

Servlet Filters are pluggable java components that we can use to intercept and process requests before
they are sent to servlets and response after servlet code is finished and before container sends the
response back to the client.

Some common tasks that we can do with filters are:

 Logging request parameters to log files.

 Authentication and autherization of request for resources.
 Formatting of request body or header before sending it to servlet.
 Compressing the response data sent to the client.
 Alter response by adding some cookies, header information etc.

Read more about filters at Servlet Filter.

38.What is the effective way to make sure all the servlets are
accessible only when user has a valid session?
We know that servlet filters can be used to intercept request between servlet container and servlet, we can
utilize it to create authentication filter and check if request contains a valid session or not.
Check out Authentication Filter example at Servlet Filter Example.

39.Why do we have servlet listeners?

We know that using ServletContext, we can create an attribute with application scope that all other servlets
can access but we can initialize ServletContext init parameters as String only in deployment descriptor
(web.xml). What if our application is database oriented and we want to set an attribute in ServletContext for
Database Connection.

If you application has a single entry point (user login), then you can do it in the first servlet request but if we
have multiple entry points then doing it everywhere will result in a lot of code redundancy. Also if database
is down or not configured properly, we won’t know until first client request comes to server. To handle these
scenario, servlet API provides Listener interfaces that we can implement and configure to listen to an event
and do certain operations.

Read more about different types of listeners and example at Servlet Listener.

40.How to handle exceptions thrown by application with another

servlet?
If you notice, doGet() and doPost() methods throw ServletException and IOException. Since browser
understand only HTML, when our application throw exception, servlet container processes the exception
and generate a HTML response. Same goes with other error codes like 404, 403 etc.

Servlet API provides support for custom Exception and Error Handler servlets that we can configure in
deployment descriptor, the whole purpose of these servlets are to handle the Exception or Error raised by
application and send HTML response that is useful for the user. We can provide link to application home
page or some details to let user know what went wrong.

We can configure them in web.xml like below:

<error-page>

<error-code>404</error-code>

<location>/AppExceptionHandler</location>

</error-page>

<error-page>

<exception-type>javax.servlet.ServletException</exception-type>

<location>/AppExceptionHandler</location>

</error-page>

Read more at Servlet Exception Handling.

41.What is a deployment descriptor?

Deployment descriptor is a configuration file for the web application and it’s name is web.xml and it resides
in WEB-INF directory. Servlet container use this file to configure web application servlets, servlet config
params, context init params, filters, listeners, welcome pages and error handlers.
With servlet 3.0 annotations, we can remove a lot of clutter from web.xml by configuring servlets, filters and
listeners using annotations.

42.How to make sure a servlet is loaded at the application

startup?
Usually servlet container loads a servlet on the first client request but sometimes when the servlet is heavy
and takes time to loads, we might want to load it on application startup. We can use load-on-startup
element with servlet configuration in web.xml file or use WebServlet annotation loadOnStartup variable to
tell container to load the servlet on system startup.

<servlet>

<servlet-name>foo</servlet-name>

<servlet-class>com.foo.servlets.Foo</servlet-class>

<load-on-startup>5</load-on-startup>

</servlet>

The load-on-startup value should be int, if it’s negative integer then servlet container will load the servlet
based on client requests and requirement but if it’s 0 or positive, then container will load it on application
startup.

If there are multiple servlets with load-on-startup value such as 0,1,2,3 then lower integer value servlet will
be loaded first.

43.How to get the actual path of servlet in server?

We can use following code snippet to get the actual path of the servlet in file system.

getServletContext().getRealPath(request.getServletPath())

44.How to get the server information in a servlet?

We can use below code snippet to get the servlet information in a servlet through servlet context object.

getServletContext().getServerInfo()

45.Write a servlet to upload file on server.

File Upload and Download and common tasks in a java web application. Unfortunately Servlet API doesn’t
provide easy methods to upload file on server, so we can use Apache FileUpload jar to make our life
easier.

Please read File Upload Servlet post that provide all the necessary details with example program to
upload and download file using servlets.

46.How do we go with database connection and log4j integration

in servlet?
If you work with database connection a lot in your web application, its best to initialize it in a servlet context
listener and set it as a context attribute for other servlets to use.
Integrating Log4j is also very easy in web applications, all we need is a log4j configuration XML or property
file and then configure it in a servlet context listener.

For complete example, please look into Servlet Database and Log4j Example.

47.How to get the IP address of client in servlet?

We can use request.getRemoteAddr() to get the client IP address in servlet.

48.What are important features of Servlet 3?

Servlet Specs 3.0 was a major release and some of the important features are:

Servlet Annotations: Prior to Servlet 3, all the servlet mapping and it’s init parameters were used to
defined in web.xml, this was not convenient and more error prone when number of servlets are huge in an
application.

Servlet 3 introduced use of java annotations to define a servlet, filter and listener servlets and init
parameters. Some of the important Servlet API annotations are WebServlet, WebInitParam, WebFilter and
WebListener. Read more about them at Servlet 3 annotations.

Web Fragments: Prior to servlet specs 3.0, all the web application configurations are required to be
present in the web.xml that makes it cluttered with lot of elements and chances of error increases. So
servlet 3 specs introduced web fragments where we can have multiple modules in a single web application,
all these modules should have web-fragment.xml file in META-INF directory. We can include all the
elements of web.xml inside the web-fragment.xml too. This helps us in dividing our web application into
separate modules that are included as JAR file in the web application lib directory.

Adding Web Components dynamically: We can use ServletContext object to add servlets, filters and
listeners programmatically. This helps us in building dynamic system where we are loading a component
only if we need it. These methods are addServlet(), addFilter() and addListener() defined in the servlet
context object.

Asynchronous Processing: Asynchronous support was added to delegate the request processing to
another thread rather than keeping the servlet thread busy. It can increase the throughput performance of
the application. This is an advance topic and I recommend to read Async Servlet tutorial.

49.What are different ways for servlet authentication?

Servlet Container provides different ways of login based servlet authentication:

11. HTTP Basic Authentication

12. HTTP Digest Authentication
13. HTTPS Authentication
14. Form Based Login: A standard HTML form for authentication, advantage is that we can
change the login page layout as our application requirements rather than using HTTP built-in
login mechanisms.

50.How can we achieve transport layer security for our web

application?
We can configure our servlet container to use SSL for message communication over the network. To
configure SSL on Tomcat, we need a digital certificate that can be created using Java keytool for
development environment. For production environment, you should get the digital certificate from SSL
certificate providers, for example, Verisign or Entrust.

Read more at Configure SSL on Tomcat article.

That’s all for the servlet interview questions and answers. I will keep on adding more servlet based
interview questions to the list in future, so don’t forget to bookmark it for future reference.