Exercise 4 Solution

This is the solution for Exercise 4, Developing a Simple Web Commerce Application with Eclipse. The four sections in the exercise take you through the construction of a simple web commerce application using Eclipse and Apache's Tomcat. Input for this exercise is project com.ibm.jdg2e.servletApp.input.

Chapters 2, 3, and 4, Getting Started with Eclipse, Using Java Development Tools, and Running and Debugging Java provide the detail on using Eclipse that is required to complete this exercise. We suggest you start there. Also consider the exercises that go with these chapters: Exercise 1, Using Eclipse, Exercise 2, Using the Java Development Tools, and Exercise 3, Running and Debugging Java.

Solution Overview

The solution is comprised of a number resources.

The Java implementation. These are described below and in the Javadoc.
A launch configuration for remote debugging between Eclipse and Tomcat.
External tools definitions for starting and stopping Tomcat.
An Ant script for building and deploying the web application to Tomcat. Some of these Ant tasks require that Tomcat be running.
A builder definition for automatically rebuilding and deploying the web application to Tomcat. This builder definition requires Tomcat to be running. If it is not, you will get a build error when the Ant task fails to connect to Tomcat.
A linked file definition to reference the Tomcat configuration file that specifies users and passwords.
A reference to the Tomcat JAR file with the servlet API.
A reference to to Tomcat JAR file defining the Tomcat Ant tasks.
Ant properties defined in your Ant Runtime preferences.

If you simply load or import this project, you will see errors because several of these definitions will be incomplete or incorrect. Review Exercise 4 to understand how to complete the definitions.

Solution Classes

Class	Description
`Catalog`	A catalog listing the items available in inventory.
`CatalogPage`	Base class for pages showing catalog entries.
`Item`	Describes a catalog item for on-line store.
`ItemOrder`	Associates a catalog Item with a specific order by keeping track of the number ordered and the total price.
`KidsBooksPage`	A specialization of the CatalogPage servlet that displays a page selling three famous kids-book series.
`OrderPage`	Shows all items currently in ShoppingCart.
`ServletUtilities`	Some simple time savers.
`ShoppingCart`	A shopping cart data structure used to track orders.
`TechBooksPage`	A specialization of the CatalogPage servlet that displays a page selling two famous computer books.