Types of Servlets

There is a possibility of developing ‘n’ types of servlets, like httpservlet, ftpservlet, smtpservlet etc. for all these protocol specific servlet classes GenericServlet is the common super class containing common properties and logics. So, GenericServlet is not a separate type of servlet.

As of now Servlet API is giving only one subclass to GenericServlet i.e HttpServlet class because all web servers are designed based on the protocol http.

                               
Generic servlets extend javax.servlet.GenericServlet – It is protocol independent servlet. Generic Servlet is a base class servlet from which all other Servlets are derived. Generic Servlet supports for HTTP, FTP and SMTP protocols. It implements the Servlet and ServletConfig interface. It has only init() and destroy() method of ServletConfig interface in its life cycle. It also implements the log method of ServletContext interface.

HTTP servlets extend javax.servlet.HttpServlet – HTTPServlet is HTTP dependent servlet. The HTTP protocol is a set of rules that allows Web browsers and servers to communicate.  When Web browsers and servers support the HTTP protocol, Java-based web applications are dependent on HTTP Servlets.HttpServlet is Extended by Generic Servlet. It provides an abstract class for the developers for extend to create there own HTTP specific servlets.