Interface ServletContext

javax.servlet

Interface ServletContext

public interface ServletContextDefines a set of methods that a servlet uses to communicate with its servlet container, for example, to get the MIME type of a file, dispatch requests, or write to a log file.

There is one context per "web application" per Java Virtual Machine. (A "web application" is a collection of servlets and content installed under a specific subset of the server's URL namespace such as

/catalog

and possibly installed via a

.war

file.)

In the case of a web application marked "distributed" in its deployment descriptor, there will be one context instance for each virtual machine. In this situation, the context cannot be used as a location to share global information
(because the information won't be truly global). Use an external resource like a database instead.

The

ServletContext

object is contained within the

ServletConfig

object, which the Web server provides the servlet when the servlet is initialized.