Showing posts with label specs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label specs. Show all posts

31 January 2012

Servlets and thread safty

From Servlet 2.4 specs:

SRV.2.3.3.3
Thread Safety
Implementations of the request and response objects are not guaranteed to be thread
safe. This means that they should only be used within the scope of the request han-
dling thread.
References to the request and response objects should not be given to objects
executing in other threads as the resulting behavior may be nondeterministic. If
the thread created by the application uses the container-managed objects, such as
the request or response object, those objects must be accessed only within the
servlet’s service life cycle and such thread itself should have a life cycle within
the life cycle of the servlet’s service method because accessing those objects
after the service method ends may cause undeterministic problems. Be aware
that the request and response objects are not thread safe. If those objects were
accessed in the multiple threads, the access should be synchronized or be done
through the wrapper to add the thread safety, for instance, synchronizing the call
of the methods to access the request attribute, or using a local output stream for
the response object within a thread.

When the destroy method gets called in the Servlet?

It is an implementation-depended, nobody knows!
SRV.2.3.4
End of Service
The servlet container is not required to keep a servlet loaded for any particular
period of time. A servlet instance may be kept active in a servlet container for a
period of milliseconds, for the lifetime of the servlet container (which could be a
number of days, months, or years), or any amount of time in between.
When the servlet container determines that a servlet should be removed from
service, it calls the destroy method of the Servlet interface to allow the servlet to
release any resources it is using and save any persistent state. For example, the
container may do this when it wants to conserve memory resources, or when it is
being shut down.
Before the servlet container calls the destroy method, it must allow any
threads that are currently running in the service method of the servlet to complete
execution, or exceed a server-defined time limit.
Once the destroy method is called on a servlet instance, the container may
not route other requests to that instance of the servlet. If the container needs to
enable the servlet again, it must do so with a new instance of the servlet’s class.
After the destroy method completes, the servlet container must release the
servlet instance so that it is eligible for garbage collection.


Source Servelt-2.4 specs document