James Taylor said
This book was disappointing. I am new to JSPs. This book does not explain any basics of JSPs and Servlets. It straight away jumps into JSTL. After reading a few chapters I didnt have a clue as to what was going on. It does not explain anything about using MVC. There is no exercise at the end of any chapter so you cannot quiz yourself to see if you have understood everything or not. Also the author keeps saying "I will explain this in later chapters".
Then I bought Head First Servels and JSP. Trust me this is the book that you want if you are a beginner. This will build a solid foundation of your understanding of the whole web based Java programming.
Also notice how many people wrote review for this book versus reviews of Head First. You can tell lot many people bought Head First and more people have given excellent reviews of it.
Adam J. Heller said
This is one of the best technical books I have read. Bergsten wrote an in-depth, exhaustive tour of JavaServer Pages and the MANY related technologies, and it never once put me to sleep. It actually kept me up a few nights, but I'm a nerd like that.
For those of you new to web development, this book takes a slow and gentle approach to teaching you JSP. You will not only learn how to setup an environment and use JSP to build simple to moderately complex web applications; Bergsten filled his book with more best practices, pitfalls, supporting information, and general wisdom than I could have possibly hoped for. Taking his words to heart will set you well on your way to being a more solid, knowledgeable developer than most developers I've ever met.
For experienced developers, this book is a very fast read with a flowing style. Bergsten attacks every concept from a handful of angles to ensure complete coverage of the subject matter, so if you understand his meaning quickly, you can generally fly right by. I enjoyed reading this book so much that I rarely found myself flying over anything. The appendices are very useful as a reference, and if you're anything like myself, your copy will be filled with dog ears and highlighter.
In general, I don't hold high opinions for recent technical books. They are, in my experience, mostly superficial and lack any measure of depth. This book has set the bar as far as I'm concerned, being packed with content and wisdom without reading like an encyclopedia. Having said that, it's not without its faults.
To begin with, nobody should be fooled into thinking that using any of the JSP technology stack is NOT programming, and Bergsten tried to fool the reader far too many times. Using JSP, JSTL, and building tag libraries with either method is very much programming, and should be thought of as such. I think it does a disservice to reassure non-programmers that they don't have to learn Java or programming in general to work with JSP. That is how horrible code gets written, folks. Suffice it to say, if you're new to programming, accept that you're learning to program and absorb what you can!
In the later chapters, Bergsten's treatment of MVC was a bit off on a number of points. Views (the V in MVC [Model View Controller]) are defined as having direct access to Model objects, which creates a "template" with a lot more power and responsibility than the spirit of MVC denotes, if not eschewing the definition entirely. However, this idea of MVC fits very well with the power-hungry nature of JSP as a templating language, so I understand why it was stated that way. Just be aware, Bergsten / JSP's definition of MVC is not the same MVC you're likely to find in common MVC frameworks today. Also, the few MVC examples used bits of Struts, and I wished they wouldn't have. MVC is not that difficult; an extra page of code could have done a lot to illustrate and demystify the concept.
Another issue, albeit a small one, is that the editor appears to have taken a nap between pages 100 and 200. The code and spelling issues are slight, but there are a mess of them. (Cue Muphry's Law)
Finally, having said all that: I don't recommend this book. I have come to believe that JSP is a very confused technology, and should be avoided if you have a choice in the matter. Learn a nice framework like Rails, Cake, Django, CodeIgniter, Pylons, etc. instead, and save yourself a few hundred headaches and finger cramps. If you HAVE TO learn JSP as I did, then this is definitely a great book that will significantly help you on your way.
Even though I have such a strong distaste for JSP, I still give this book 5 stars. It was incredibly written and compiled. If I am ever in the position to write a tome on some technology, I will plan to model it after this book. It is that good (in my humble opinion).
John Najarian said
Seller was great but this is 1 of the OReilly books that's to wordy and has mistakes in the examples. I would not recommend.
Matthew T. Nelson said
This is an extremely well written and informative book. I have
lots of experience with servlets, so I don't know how the book
will appeal to page designers, but I had no problem reading and
enjoying the chapters oriented more toward them. I used to look
at JSP and see the same kind of maintenance nightmare that comes
with something like PHP when your project gets large. I have
been using WebMacro/Velocity but am now a convert to JSP since
it has matured. I love the author's philosophy of no scriptlets
in your JSPs. I own many programing books, but I believe this
is the best written I've seen.
Vladimir Alarcon said
If you are looking for a quick cookbook this should not be your choice. If you want to learn JSP in depth, buy it right now. Hans guides you from the basics to comprehensive details of JSP technology in a very structured way.
In any case, (from my point of view) JSP is not the whole jigsaw for building web applications, it's just a piece of it. So don't expect to be able to build real web applications if you just have read this book. At least, consider reading also Java, Struts/MVC and SQL.
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