Coldbeans Software implemented next version of alaJSP preprocessor. What is this for ? It is a web development tool that lets you use Java objects right in your HTML pages. What is a main idea (ideology) of this product ?

      The nature of web site is a set of pre-formated pages (HTML pages) returned from the server by user requests. User has got ability not only request static pages but also transfer (send) some data to server (post or get requests). Server can proceed these requests and make some back-end job (e.g. fill database) as well as generate HTML pages on the fly. All this stuff follows from the nature of HTTP protocol and is pretty standard and well known at this moment. For programming such kind of functionality you can use different tools (Perl, PHP, Java servlets, Java server pages, active server pages, some markup languages like ColdFusion etc.)

      What is offered by Coldbeans? The idea of alaJSP product is the usage of standard Java objects (classes) for programming your server functionality. In some sense we can say it is similar to server side included where these server side objects are Java classes. We have not special restrictions for server based classes. You do not need write servlets or beans. You can use any Java class on your server.

      The second moment is how to instruct your server to do some job with your server-side Java. We are using some markup language extended standard HTML. The syntax is similar to JSP syntax. You can set creation of objects, call methods, use methods results in your HTML pages etc. Yes, we can say it is similar to some markup languages like Allaire's ColdFusion where the whole back end is a Java. Your objects (instances) can be saved in global, local or session context. Also through alaJSP console you can review or reload your active classes. So from this point of view we have some functionality of application servers (like NetDynamics for example).

      Why we call it alaJSP in the same time ? Mostly because we are using syntax similar to JSP. It is again a some kind of leverage. If you decide later to go to pure JSP (despite that we can not advice that in the most cases) it should be very easy.

      What is a main difference from JSP ? At the first hand it is a preprocessor. So when JSP will produce some Java servlet on the fly, alaJSP will produce pure HTML code. Again the alter ego of alaJSP is the word leverage. We will allow you to use all stuff you are using now for your web development. You can mix for example Perl and alaJSP, keep all your JavaScript stuff etc. The second moment is restrictions for your Java objects. Or for the alaJSP it is a lack of restrictions. You can use any Java classes.

      alaJSP implementation is a Java servlet itself. So all your pages served by alaJSP will be preprocessed by this servlet. You can pass your pages as a parameter for this servlet (it means just use
http://host/servlet/alaJSP?your_page instead of
http://host/jour_page)
or define some mapping for your servletrunner when all files with the specified extension (e.g. ajsp) will be parsed by alaSJP servlet automatically.

The latest version of alaJSP can be downloaded from our site.

See tools page