FWA: Java Servlets & JSP Implementation

Built this to get my hands dirty with Java’s old-school web tech - Servlets and JSP. you need to understand the foundations before jumping into the fancy frameworks.

What’s Inside:

• Full servlet lifecycle implementation (because someone had to do it)
• Session management that doesn’t leak memory
• Form handling with actual validation (novel concept, I know)
• Database work through raw JDBC connections
• JSP templates that somehow still work in 2025
• MVC pattern because sanity matters

Running on Tomcat with JSTL for the template logic. Used Maven to keep the dependencies from becoming a complete nightmare. The real challenge was thread safety in the servlet environment - turns out shared state and concurrent requests don’t play nice together. Had to brush up on Java synchronization patterns I hadn’t touched ever.

Wouldn’t build a production app this way now, but understanding how request-response cycles actually work under the hood has made me better with every framework I’ve touched since. Sometimes you need to look backward to move forward.