Java Servlets - Database Access - Adglob Infosystem Pvt Ltd

In this guide we will discuss about database access of servlets. This chapter assumes you have understanding on how JDBC application works. Before starting with database access through a servlet, make sure you have proper JDBC environment setup along with a database.

For more detail on how to access database using JDBC and its environment setup you can go through our JDBC Tutorial.

To start with basic concept, let us create a simple table and create few records in that table as follows −

Create Table

To create the Employees table in TEST database, use the following steps −

Step 1

Open a Command Prompt and change to the installation directory as follows −

C:\>
C:\>cd Program Files\MySQL\bin
C:\Program Files\MySQL\bin>

Step 2

C:\Program Files\MySQL\bin>mysql -u root -p
Enter password: ********
mysql>

Step 3

Create the table Employee in TEST database as follows −

mysql> use TEST;
mysql> create table Employees (
   id int not null,
   age int not null,
   first varchar (255),
   last varchar (255)
);
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.08 sec)
mysql>

Create Data Records

Finally you create few records in Employee table as follows −

mysql> INSERT INTO Employees VALUES (100, 18, 'Zara', 'Ali');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.05 sec)
 
mysql> INSERT INTO Employees VALUES (101, 25, 'Mahnaz', 'Fatma');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
 
mysql> INSERT INTO Employees VALUES (102, 30, 'Zaid', 'Khan');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
 
mysql> INSERT INTO Employees VALUES (103, 28, 'Sumit', 'Mittal');
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
 
mysql>

Accessing a Database

Here is an example which shows how to access TEST database using Servlet.

// Loading required libraries
import java.io.*;
import java.util.*;
import javax.servlet.*;
import javax.servlet.http.*;
import java.sql.*;
 
public class DatabaseAccess extends HttpServlet{

   public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
      throws ServletException, IOException {
   
      // JDBC driver name and database URL
      static final String JDBC_DRIVER = "com.mysql.jdbc.Driver";  
      static final String DB_URL="jdbc:mysql://localhost/TEST";

      //  Database credentials
      static final String USER = "root";
      static final String PASS = "password";

      // Set response content type
      response.setContentType("text/html");
      PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
      String title = "Database Result";
      
      String docType =
         "<!doctype html public \"-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 " + "transitional//en\">\n";
      
      out.println(docType +
         "<html>\n" +
         "<head><title>" + title + "</title></head>\n" +
         "<body bgcolor = \"#f0f0f0\">\n" +
         "<h1 align = \"center\">" + title + "</h1>\n");
      try {
         // Register JDBC driver
         Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver");

         // Open a connection
         Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection(DB_URL, USER, PASS);

         // Execute SQL query
         Statement stmt = conn.createStatement();
         String sql;
         sql = "SELECT id, first, last, age FROM Employees";
         ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery(sql);

         // Extract data from result set
         while(rs.next()){
            //Retrieve by column name
            int id  = rs.getInt("id");
            int age = rs.getInt("age");
            String first = rs.getString("first");
            String last = rs.getString("last");

            //Display values
            out.println("ID: " + id + "<br>");
            out.println(", Age: " + age + "<br>");
            out.println(", First: " + first + "<br>");
            out.println(", Last: " + last + "<br>");
         }
         out.println("</body></html>");

         // Clean-up environment
         rs.close();
         stmt.close();
         conn.close();
      } catch(SQLException se) {
         //Handle errors for JDBC
         se.printStackTrace();
      } catch(Exception e) {
         //Handle errors for Class.forName
         e.printStackTrace();
      } finally {
         //finally block used to close resources
         try {
            if(stmt!=null)
               stmt.close();
         } catch(SQLException se2) {
         } // nothing we can do
         try {
            if(conn!=null)
            conn.close();
         } catch(SQLException se) {
            se.printStackTrace();
         } //end finally try
      } //end try
   }
}

Now let us compile above servlet and create following entries in web.xml

....
<servlet>
   <servlet-name>DatabaseAccess</servlet-name>
   <servlet-class>DatabaseAccess</servlet-class>
</servlet>
 
<servlet-mapping>
   <servlet-name>DatabaseAccess</servlet-name>
   <url-pattern>/DatabaseAccess</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
....

Now call this servlet using URL http://localhost:8080/DatabaseAccess which would display following response −

                                          Database Result
ID: 100, Age: 18, First: Zara, Last: Ali
ID: 101, Age: 25, First: Mahnaz, Last: Fatma
ID: 102, Age: 30, First: Zaid, Last: Khan
ID: 103, Age: 28, First: Sumit, Last: Mittal

In this guide we discussed about database access of servlets.

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