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This new edition of Learning
Java has been expanded and updated for Java 2 Standard Edition SDK
1.4. It comprehensively addresses important topics such as web applications,
servlets, and XML that are increasingly driving enterprise applications.
This edition provides full coverage of all Java 1.4 language features
including assertions and exception chaining as well as new APIs such as
regular expressions and NIO, the new I/O package. New Swing features and
components are described along with updated coverage of the JavaBeans
component architecture using the open source NetBeans IDE the latest
information about Applets and the Java Plug-in for all major web browsers. 777 |
Copyright
Copyright © 2002, 2000 O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. All rights
reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Published by O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein
Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472.
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corporate@oreilly.com.
Nutshell Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, and the
O'Reilly logo are registered trademarks of O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. Java™ and
all Java-based trademarks and logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of
Sun Microsystems, Inc., in the United States and other countries. O'Reilly &
Associates, Inc., is independent of Sun Microsystems.
Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to
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claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps. The
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a trademark of O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of
this book, the publisher and the authors assume no responsibility for errors or
omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained
herein.
This book is about the Java™ language and programming
environment. Whether you are a software developer or just someone who's been
active on the Internet in the past few years, you've undoubtedly heard a lot
about Java. Its introduction was one of the most exciting developments in the
history of the Internet. Java became the darling of the Internet programming
community as soon as the alpha version was released in 1995. Immediately,
thousands of people were writing Java applets to add to their web pages. Since
then Java has grown up and traveled far from its browser-based roots. Java is
now, arguably, the most popular programming language in the world, used by
millions. In recent years Java has surpassed languages such as C++ and Visual
Basic in terms of developer demand and become the de facto language for new
development—especially for web-based applications and services. Most
universities are now using Java in their introductory courses, alongside the
other important modern languages. Perhaps you are using this text in one of your
classes right now!
What, then, is Java? Java is a new kind of programming
language that was developed by Sun Microsystems to work on myriads of computing
devices and to thrive in networked applications. It's widely used to create
interactive web pages and web services. However, we have still seen only the
start. The Java language and environment are rich enough to support new kinds of
applications, such as dynamically extensible web browsers and mobile agents.
Entirely new kinds of computer platforms have been and are being developed
around Java; these include handheld devices and network computers that download
all their software dynamically over the network. In the coming years, we'll see
even more of what Java can do. Fancy web pages are fun and interesting, but they
certainly aren't the end of the story. The success of Java is changing the way
we think about computing in fundamental ways.
This book gives you a thorough grounding in Java
fundamentals. Learning Java, Second Edition, attempts to live up to its
name by mapping out the Java language, its class libraries, programming
techniques, and idioms. We'll dig deep into interesting areas and at least
scratch the surface of the rest. Other titles from O'Reilly & Associates pick up
where we leave off and provide more comprehensive information on specific areas
and applications of Java.
Whenever possible, we provide compelling, realistic and
examples and avoid merely cataloging features. The examples are simple but hint
at what can be done. We won't be developing the next great "killer app" in these
pages, but we hope to give you a starting point for many hours of
experimentation and inspired tinkering that will lead you to learn more on your
own.
This book, Learning Java, is actually the fourth
edition—reworked and retitled—of our original popular Exploring Java.
With each edition we've taken great care not only to add new material covering
additional features, but to thoroughly revise and update the existing content to
synthesize the coverage and add years of real world perspective and experience
to these pages.
One noticeable change in recent editions is that we've
deemphasized the use of applets, reflecting their somewhat static role over the
past couple of years in creating interactive web pages. And in this edition
we've greatly expanded our coverage of web applications and services, which are
now mature technologies. We've also included a chapter on working with XML and
XSL, which are important new technologies.
We cover the most interesting features of Sun's newest
release of Java, officially called Java 2 Standard Edition SDK Version 1.4 . (In
the old days, it would have been called JDK for Java Development Kit; Sun now
uses the term SDK for Software Development Kit.) Sun coined the term "Java 2" to
cover the major new features introduced in Java Version 1.2. When it's necessary
to mention versions, we'll simply refer to them as Java 1.x.
New features in Java 1.4 include important improvements for
servlets and web applications, regular expressions, Swing enhancements, new
language features such as assertions and chained exceptions, logging and
preferences APIs and a completely new I/O facility.
Another important change in recent Java history (Version 1.2)
was the ascendancy of Java Swing as the main API for graphical user interface
programming. All the material in this book relating to AWT, Java's original GUI
programming interface, has been recast and updated in terms of the Swing
facilities.
New in This Edition
This edition of the book has been significantly reworked to
be as complete and up to date as possible. New topics in this edition include:
-
Language assertions and exception chaining (Chapter
4)
-
Regular expressions (Chapter
9)
-
The new preferences and logging APIs (Chapter
10)
-
The NIO package for scaleable I/O (Chapter
11 and
Chapter 12)
-
Full coverage of the servlet and web applications API (Chapter
14)
-
Swing updates including formatted text and the new focus
system (Chapters
Chapter 15 through
Chapter 17)
-
JavaBeans examples using the NetBeans IDE (Chapter
21)
-
Information on the Java Plug-in and applet signing (Chapter
22)
-
Full coverage of XML including SAX, DOM, DTDs, XSL/XSLT,
and the new JavaBeans XMLEncoder (Chapter
23)
This book is for computer professionals, students, technical
people, and Finnish hackers. It's for everyone who has a need for hands-on
experience with the Java language with an eye toward building real applications.
This book could also be considered a crash course in object-oriented
programming; as you learn about Java, you'll also learn a powerful and practical
approach to object-oriented software development.
Superficially, Java looks like C or C++, so you'll have a
head start in using this book if you have some experience with one of these
languages. If you do not however, don't worry. Don't make too much of the
syntactic similarities between Java and C or C++. In many respects, Java acts
like more dynamic languages such as Smalltalk and Lisp. Knowledge of another
object-oriented programming language should certainly help, although you may
have to change some ideas and unlearn a few habits. Java is considerably simpler
than languages like C++ and Smalltalk. If you learn well from good, concise
examples and personal experimentation, we think you'll like this book.
Although we encourage you to take a broad view, you would
have every right to be disappointed if we ignored the Web. A substantial part of
this book does discuss Java in the context of web applications, so you should be
familiar with the basic ideas behind web browsers, servers, and documents.
This book is organized roughly as follows:
-
Chapter 1 and
Chapter 2 provide a basic introduction to Java concepts and a tutorial to
give you a jump start on Java programming.
-
Chapter 3 discusses tools for developing with Java (the compiler, the
interpreter, and the JAR file package). It also covers important concepts such
as embedding Java code in HTML support and object signing.
-
Chapter 4 through
Chapter 8 describe the Java language itself.
Chapter 8 covers the language's thread facilities, which should be of
particular interest to advanced programmers.
-
Chapter 9 covers basic string utilities and the powerful Regular
Expressions API.
-
Chapter 10 and
Chapter 11 cover much of the core API.
Chapter 10 describes basic utilities, and
Chapter 11 covers I/O facilities.
-
Chapter 12 and
Chapter 13 cover Java networking including sockets and NIO, URLs, and
remote method invocation (RMI).
-
Chapter 14 covers web applications using servlets, servlet filters, and
WAR files.
-
Chapter 15 through
Chapter 20 cover the Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT) and Swing, which
provide graphical user interface (GUI) and image support.
-
Chapter 21 covers the JavaBeans™ component architecture.
-
Chapter 22 covers applets, the area in which Java saw its initial success.
-
Chapter 23 covers the Java APIs for working with XML and XSLT.
If you're like us, you don't read books from front to back.
If you're really like us, you usually don't read the Preface at all. However, on
the off chance that you will see this in time, here are a few suggestions:
-
If you are an experienced programmer who has to learn Java
in the next five minutes, you are probably looking for the examples. You might
want to start by glancing at the tutorial in
Chapter 2. If that doesn't float your boat, you should at least look at
the information in
Chapter 3, which tells how to use the compiler and interpreter, and gives
the basics of a standalone Java application. This should get you started.
-
Chapter 12 through
Chapter 14 are essential if you are interested in writing advanced
networked or web-based applications. This is one of the more interesting and
important parts of Java.
-
Chapter 15 though
Chapter 21 discuss Java's graphics features and component architecture.
You should read this if you are interested in writing graphical Java
applications or applets.
-
Chapter 22 covers the Applet API, including the Java Plug-in for
guaranteed browser compatibility and signed applets for advanced applications.
-
Chapter 23 covers the Java APIs for working with XML, including SAX, DOM,
DTDs, and using XSL to render output for the Web. XML technology is becoming
key to cross-platform development.
On the CD-ROM
The accompanying CD-ROM provides all you need to start
working with Java immediately (view CD content online at
http://examples.oreilly.com/learnjava2/CD-ROM/). Open source software on the
CD-ROM includes:
-
Java 2 Standard Edition SDK (Version 1.4.0)
-
NetBeans (Version 3.3.1), a visual IDE for working with
JavaBeans
-
Ant (Version 1.4.1), a Java servlet engine from the Jakarta
Project
-
Tomcat (Version 4.0.3), a Java servlet engine from the
Jakarta Project
-
BeanShell (Version 1.2), a simple Java scripting language
There are many online sources for information about Java. Sun
Microsystems's official web site for Java topics is
http://java.sun.com; look here for the latest news, updates, and Java
releases. This is where you'll find the Java SDK, which includes the compiler,
the interpreter, and other tools (the SDK is also on the CD-ROM that comes with
this book; view CD content online at
http://examples.oreilly.com/learnjava2/CD-ROM/).
You should also visit O'Reilly & Associates' Java site at
http://java.oreilly.com. There you'll find information about other O'Reilly
Java books, and a pointer to the home page for
Learning Java,
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnjava2/, where you'll find the source
code examples for this book.
The comp.lang.java newsgroup
can be a good source of information and announcements, and a place to ask
intelligent questions.
The font conventions used in this book are quite simple.
Italic is used for:
-
Unix pathnames, filenames, and program names
-
Internet addresses, such as domain names and URLs
-
New terms where they are defined
-
GUI buttons and menus, and threads
-
Program names, compilers, interpreters, utilities, and
commands
Constant width is used for:
-
Anything that might appear in a Java program, including
method names, variable names, and class names
-
Command lines and options that should be typed verbatim on
the screen
-
Tags that might appear in an HTML or XML document
-
Keywords, objects, and environment variables
Constant width bold is used for:
Constant width italic is used for:
 |
This icon designates a note, which is an important
aside to the nearby text. |
|
 |
This icon designates a warning relating to the nearby
text. |
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In the main body of text, we always use a pair of empty
parentheses after a method name to distinguish methods from variables and other
creatures.
In the Java source listings, we follow the coding conventions
most frequently used in the Java community. Class names begin with capital
letters; variable and method names begin with lowercase. All the letters in the
names of constants are capitalized. We don't use underscores to separate words
in a long name; following common practice, we capitalize individual words (after
the first) and run the words together. For example: thisIsAVariable,
thisIsAMethod(), ThisIsAClass, and THISISACONSTANT.
Also, note that we differentiate between static and nonstatic methods when we
refer to them. Unlike some books, we never write Foo.bar() to mean the
bar() method of Foo unless bar() is actually static.
Please address comments and questions concerning this book to
the publisher:
- O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
- 1005 Gravenstein Highway North
- Sebastopol, CA 95472
- (800) 998-9938 (in the United States or Canada)
- (707) 829-0515 (international or local)
- (707) 829-0104 (fax)
We have a web page for this book, where we list errata,
examples, or any additional information. You can access this page at:
-
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/learnjava2
To comment or ask technical questions about this book, send
email to:
-
bookquestions@oreilly.com
For more information about our books, conferences, Resource
Centers, and the O'Reilly Network, see our web site at:
-
http://www.oreilly.com
Many people have contributed to putting this book together,
both in its Exploring Java incarnation and in its current form as
Learning Java. Foremost we would like to thank Tim O'Reilly for giving us
the opportunity to write this book. Special thanks to Mike Loukides, the series
editor, whose endless patience and experience got us through the difficult
parts. Paula Ferguson and John Posner contributed their organizational and
editing abilities to get the material into final form. We could not have asked
for a more skillful or responsive team of people with whom to work.
Speaking of borrowings, the original version of the glossary
came from David Flanagan's book, Java in a Nutshell.
We also borrowed the class hierarchy diagrams from David's book. These diagrams
were based on similar diagrams by Charles L. Perkins. His original diagrams are
available at
http://rendezvous.com/java/.
Thanks also to Marc Wallace and Steven Burkett for reading
the original work in progress and for the support of our friends at Washington
University. A big thanks to Deb Cameron who edited this edition of the book and
kept me from getting too far behind schedule (thanks for all the hard work
Deb!). Thanks to all those who reviewed or answered questions for the latest
edition: Jim Elliott and Brian Cole for Swing, Jack Shirazi for NIO, Tim
Boudreau for NetBeans, Ed Howland for XML, and Ian Darwin for regular
expressions. (Check out Ian's O'Reilly Java Cookbook
for more examples.) Thanks also to Ray O'Leary, Mario Aquino, and Mark Volkmann
for their reviews. Finally, special thanks to Song Fang for putting up with me
through all this work.
