The JavaTM Tutorial

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Trail: Servlets

## Lesson: Running Servlets

> This lesson shows you a few ways to invoke servlets:

### Typing a servlet URL into a browser window

> Servlets can be called directly by typing their URL into a browser's location window. This is how you access the main page of the Duke's Bookstore example. This section shows you the general form of a servlet URL.

### Calling a servlet from within an HTML page

> Servlet URLs can be used in HTML tags, where a URL for a CGI-bin script or file URL might be found. This section shows servlet URLs being used as the destination of an anchor, as the action in a form, and as the location to be used when a META tag directs that a page be refreshed. This section assumes knowledge of HTML. If you don't know HTML you can learn about it through various books or by looking at the `HTML 3.2 Reference Specification`.

This lesson assumes:

- Your machine, `localhost`, is running the JSDK server (JSDK 2.1) or servletrunner (JSDK 2.0) or a servlet-enabled web server such as `the Java Web Server` at port 8080
- The servlet example, Duke's Bookstore, is located in the top-level of that process's directory for servlets. For the JSDK 2.1 server, this means that the class files are in the WEB-INF subdirectory of the server's document root. For `servletrunner` (JSDK 2.0), this means that the class files are in the servlet directory specified by the `-d` option.

If these two things are true, then you should be able to run the servlet example by typing in the URLs given in the example.

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