JBoss Hibernate Reference - 1.4.2. Processing and rendering

1.4.2. Processing and rendering

Let's implement the processing of the request and rendering of the page.

// Write HTML header
PrintWriter out = response.getWriter();
out.println("<html><head><title>Event Manager</title></head><body>");

// Handle actions
if ( "store".equals(request.getParameter("action")) ) {

    String eventTitle = request.getParameter("eventTitle");
    String eventDate = request.getParameter("eventDate");

    if ( "".equals(eventTitle) || "".equals(eventDate) ) {
        out.println("<b><i>Please enter event title and date.</i></b>");
    } else {
        createAndStoreEvent(eventTitle, dateFormatter.parse(eventDate));
        out.println("<b><i>Added event.</i></b>");
    }
}

// Print page
printEventForm(out);
listEvents(out, dateFormatter);

// Write HTML footer
out.println("</body></html>");
out.flush();
out.close();

Granted, this coding style with a mix of Java and HTML would not scale in a more complex application - keep in mind that we are only illustrating basic Hibernate concepts in this tutorial. The code prints an HTML header and a footer. Inside this page, an HTML form for event entry and a list of all events in the database are printed. The first method is trivial and only outputs HTML:

private void printEventForm(PrintWriter out) {
    out.println("<h2>Add new event:</h2>");
    out.println("<form>");
    out.println("Title: <input name='eventTitle' length='50'/><br/>");
    out.println("Date (e.g. 24.12.2009): <input name='eventDate' length='10'/><br/>");
    out.println("<input type='submit' name='action' value='store'/>");
    out.println("</form>");
}

The listEvents() method uses the Hibernate Session bound to the current thread to execute a query:

private void listEvents(PrintWriter out, SimpleDateFormat dateFormatter) {

    List result = HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory()
                    .getCurrentSession().createCriteria(Event.class).list();
    if (result.size() > 0) {
        out.println("<h2>Events in database:</h2>");
        out.println("<table border='1'>");
        out.println("<tr>");
        out.println("<th>Event title</th>");
        out.println("<th>Event date</th>");
        out.println("</tr>");
        for (Iterator it = result.iterator(); it.hasNext();) {
            Event event = (Event) it.next();
            out.println("<tr>");
            out.println("<td>" + event.getTitle() + "</td>");
            out.println("<td>" + dateFormatter.format(event.getDate()) + "</td>");
            out.println("</tr>");
        }
        out.println("</table>");
    }
}

Finally, the store action is dispatched to the createAndStoreEvent() method, which also uses the Session of the current thread:

protected void createAndStoreEvent(String title, Date theDate) {
    Event theEvent = new Event();
    theEvent.setTitle(title);
    theEvent.setDate(theDate);

    HibernateUtil.getSessionFactory()
                    .getCurrentSession().save(theEvent);
}

That's it, the servlet is complete. A request to the servlet will be processed in a single Session and Transaction. As earlier in the standalone application, Hibernate can automatically bind these ojects to the current thread of execution. This gives you the freedom to layer your code and access the SessionFactory in any way you like. Usually you'd use a more sophisticated design and move the data access code into data access objects (the DAO pattern). See the Hibernate Wiki for more examples.