On 8/9/05, Dave Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Frank W. Zammetti wrote: > > > P.S. - Someone else asked if a listener is better than a startup > > servlet of Struts plug-in... IMO, it's better than a plug-in because > > it's one less thing that is Struts-specific... Arguably it isn't any > > better than a startup servlet I suppose. > > I'm still using startup servlets out of habit and was just wondering if > there was any compelling reason to switch over to session listeners--any > differences under clustering or something? I dunno. >
On most existing containers it probably doesn't matter, but you are relying on a non-required-by-the-specs behavior isse when you do this. (The exact same issue affects Struts plugins, which are managed in the init() and destroy() methods of ActionServlet.) The servlet container is *explicity* allowed (if it wants to) to unload a servlet at any point during the application's lifetime, which would include a call to destroy(). If a subsequent call for this servlet comes in, it will get reinitialized via init(). Why might a container want to do this? Maybe it is seeing memory getting full, and no calls to your servlet (quite likely if it is solely used for initialization). Just like an OS might want to swap out an idle process, the container might want to "swap out" an idle servlet. If this happens to your initialization servlet, or to the Struts ActionServlet, this is not likely to be a Good Thing. A ServletContextListener, on the other hand, is *guaranteed* that the contextInitialized() and contextDestroyed() methods are only called at those two points in the application's lifetime, no matter what happens in between. > Dave Craig --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
