Java and JSP utilities for MCS 270

I am providing files which provide three things for use in your projects:

Much of this was originally done by one of the programming groups in last year's MCS 270 class. (The group consisted of Justin Delegard, Finn Kuusisto, Dan Messerschmidt, Ryan Rud, and Jared Wangen). Also, Zach Armstrong came up with the mechanism for handling redirecting to other files. They all did a great job setting this stuff up, and I just did a little tweaking around the edges.

Obtaining the files

These files are available to you in the following directory: 

    ~karl/public/270/jsp/utilities/
This directory is set up with the same general directory structure as I used in the gened example you used for lab 4. I recommend that you not copy this directly into your CVS work directory, but instead copy somewhere else so that you can see how it works, and then copy the portions you want to use into your CVS work directory.

Java classes: Person and LdapHandler

The files Person.java and LdapHandler.java allow you to look up and keep track of information about users on the Gustavus computer system. The LdapHandler is configured to look up the first and last names of Gustavus users (though they will be set to empty strings if the given user has chosen restrict such information). A call to the constructor Person(String username) will cause the LdapHandler to look up this information.

This package is currently named utilities. I recommend that you simply copy the two files Person.java and LdapHandler.java into your package directory and change their package names to whatever you are calling your package.

Here are the Javadocs for Person and LdapHandler.

Mechanism for handling logins

The two files login.jsp and loginProcess.jsp can handle logins for your application. They do so in an unauthenticated manner, so that you can "login" as anyone with a valid Gustavus username. (This is very useful for testing your system, since you can pretend to be anyone; however, it does not allow you to access any of the user's actual resources, of course.) Note that the file loginProcess.jsp forwards the user to index.jsp after logging in.

General structure for your JSP files

The two files header.jsp and footer.jsp should be included at the beginning (respectively end) of each of your JSP files; look for example at the file adminStart.jsp to see how to include them. These files simplify your programming and establish a level of uniformity to all of your pages. In particular, note how they handle redirection.

You can also see how to handle redirection (forwarding) by looking at the file formProcessor.jsp, which redirects to generalStart.jsp.