Dynamically add a servlet to the servletConfig

Question

I have a Java web application that uses a plugin architecture. I would like to know if anyone has a solution where by one could add a servlet, with serlvet mapping to the se

Answer 1

There is no standard Servlet API to accomplish this.

You can do this in Tomcat. In your webapp, your master servlet (the one creates others) must implements ContainerServlet so you can get hold of the Wrapper object. Once you have your class file installed, you can make following calls,

Context context = (Context) wrapper.getParent();
Wrapper newWrapper = context.createWrapper();
newWrapper.setName(name);
newWrapper.setLoadOnStartup(1);
newWrapper.setServletClass(servletClass);
context.addChild(newWrapper);
context.addServletMapping(pattern, name);

These calls create a servlet on the fly. You need to find way to persist this information. You can do this by updating web.xml or write to your own file.