Developing Web applications

Before you beginDesign a Web application and the components that it needs.

For general Web application design information, see “ Resources for learning.”

There are two basic approaches to selecting tools for developing Web applications:

You can use one of the available integrated development environments (IDEs).
IDE tools automatically generate significant parts of the servlet and JavaServer Pages (JSP) code, and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) files. They also contain integrated tools for packaging and testing the Web application components. The IBM WebSphere Application Developer product is the recommended IDE. For more information, see the documentation for that product.
If you decide to develop Web components without an IDE, you need at least an ASCII text editor. You can also use tools available in the Java Software Development Kit (SDK) and in this product to assemble, test, and deploy the Web application components.

The following steps support the second approach, development without an IDE.

If necessary, migrate any pre-existing codeto the required version of the servlet and JSP specification.
Write and compile the components of the Web application. To access classes that were extended, compile your code using the -classpath option on the javac compiler. This option allows you to reference the j2ee.jar file in the product <install_root >\lib directory. For example, to compile a servlet running on the Windows NT version of WebSphere Application Server, specify:
```
javac classpath D:\Program Files\WebSphere\AppServer\lib\j2ee.jar MyServlet.java 
```
To compile that same servlet on the Windows NT version of WebSphere Network Deployment, specify:
```
javac classpath D:\Program Files\WebSphere\DeploymentManager\lib\j2ee.jar MyServlet.java 
```
(Optional) Disable JavaServer Pages (JSP) runtime compilation, if necessary.

Sub-topics
JavaServer Faces