Re: When GET = POST?

J2EE app servers allow for discretionary functionality based on the type of request that comes in, but it's more than common-place to just wrap the methods in question so that there's a single point of entry (or so it seems) into the webapp.

Here's an excerpt from the
javax.servlet.http.HTTPServlet class for J2EE 1.3.x:

"Provides an abstract class to be subclassed to create an HTTP servlet suitable for a Web site. A subclass of HttpServlet must override at least one method, usually one of these:

• doGet, if the servlet supports HTTP GET requests
• doPost, for HTTP POST requests
• doPut, for HTTP PUT requests
• doDelete, for HTTP DELETE requests
• init and destroy, to manage resources that are held for the life of the servlet
• getServletInfo, which the servlet uses to provide information about itself"

You can check out the javadocs here:
http://java.sun.com/j2ee/sdk_1.3/techdocs/api/index.html

Most webapp functionality is almost entirely dependent on doGet and doPost, and most webapps I've seen either wrap one or the other... for example:

public class MyServlet extends HTTPServlet {     

    public void doGet (Request req, Response resp) {

        // just forward this to the doPost method
        this.doPost(req, resp);

    public void doPost (Request req, Response resp) {

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        // do what you want to do with the request here

    }
}

Note that the above signatures aren't the exact method signatures, but they indicate the idea.

I'm working with the Apache Struts framework right now which hides a lot of the controller implementation from the developer. I haven't take a look to see exactly what they do behind the scenes, whether they wrap functionality or not... but I'm about to, 'cause this thread has gotten me curious. ;)

Hope that gives you some idea of how J2EE apps are being developed.

Cheers,
-Jason