A good book. Not for someone looking for a "tutorial" or "introduction" on the subjects covered. However, a good reference book to find examples of specific programming problems for someone who already has a good understanding of servlets and JSP. Covers a good number of different aspects of servlet/JSP programming. I also found it a good book to convey some general knowledge in areas like using attributes, DB access, etc. I enjoyed selectively reading different chapters.

I'm not a big reviewer. I find writing a challenge, even if it's a positive experience, as it is now. I started learning Java a few months ago and bought a number of books on the topics I needed to really create a java website.
I stumbled on this book as one of the ten or so I purchased.

I haven't touched the other's since. This book has it all, written so clearly that you know the author is very familiar with her subject and understands it thouroughly. It was written in 2003 and discusses Tomcat server as release 4.0 but that does not matter one bit. I was truly able to use this book to put together a website. Servlet, jsp, even java script is covered. I found many questions I had assembled reading the other books being answered in this one.
Murach's books should be proud of this and I notice that they don't publish a 100 books on a subject; just have a few. I'll bet they're just as good.

This book is exactly what it claims to be: a general reference to hundreds of "everyday" situations Java Web developers face. Just as any cookbook, it doesn't go into the "deepest" details about every little thing, and it does give examples of ways to not reinvent the wheel. Some reviewers see this as worthy of only 1 star... This is only a 1 star book for readers who like to reinvent the wheel and waste time on unnecessary details... if you're like me and have deadlines to meet, you'll find what you need here quickly and efficiently.

Being an O'Reilly fan it is hard for me to find fault with their no-nonsense approach to technical books, but there is one MAJOR issue I have with this book.

As a developer for a major corporation I cannot use custom libraries for my work, especially when the license (http://www.servlets.com/cos/license.html) does not allow for commercial use. Where it would be helpful to see details on creating say, a multipart request class, Bruce Perry instead uses the com.oreilly.servlet.MultipartRequest class to hide much of the functionality (this is just one example).

This makes little or no sense. Developers in the real world need real examples. Hiding the implementation of such under the non-commercial license pretty much ruins much of the potential application of an otherwise well written book. If you buy this book realise that only some of it will actually be useful in the real world.

Target Audience
Web developers who are looking for real-life examples of the use of servlets and JSP.

Contents
This is a companion-type book that goes beyond strictly reference material to the use of different servlet and JSP features, along with working examples of code to illustrate the concepts.

The book is divided multiple chapters that each cover a different technique or function:

Writing Servlets and JSPs; Deploying Servlets and JSPs; Naming Your Servlets; Using Apache Ant; Altering the Format of JSPs; Dynamically Including Content In Servlets and JSPs; Handling Web Form Data in Servlets and JSPs; Uploading Files; Handling Exceptions in Web Applications; Reading And Setting Cookies; Session Tracking; Integrating JavaScript with Servlets And JSPs; Sending Non-HTML Content; Logging Messages from Servlets and JSPs; Authenticating Clients; Binding, Accessing, and Removing Attributes in Web Applications; Embedding Multimedia in JSPs; Working With The Client Request; Filtering Request and Responses; Managing Email In Servlets and JSPs; Accessing Databases; Using Custom Tag Libraries; Using The JSTL; Internationalization; Using JNDI and Enterprise JavaBeans; Harvesting Web Information; Using the Google and Amazon Web APIs

Review
I really like the O'Reilly Cookbook series. I read a lot as part of my ongoing study, and often it's easy to understand conceptually what is going on. But making the jump to practical solutions can be difficult at times. The Cookbook series gets plenty of use on my bookshelf as I do my day to day coding. And when it comes to servlet and JSP coding as I continue to learn more about Websphere Application Server, this book will surely become dog-eared like the rest of them. Bruce Perry has done a great job.

As with most Cookbook titles, each chapter in the Servlet And JSP Cookbook is made up of a number of Problem/Solution/Discussion groupings. This format proposes a coding problem, states the solution to solve it, and then devotes the necessary space to discuss the solution both with text and code. By using this format, you can think through a working solution and determine how to apply that technique to your own problem. Perry covers a wide range of problems that will help both the beginner and the experienced coder. For beginners, the solutions for setting cookies with servlets and JSPs may be just what you need to get started. Experienced people will find the internationalization and JNDI/Enterprise JavaBeans solutions useful. I appreciate the fact that coders of all experience levels can get something out of this book.

The only caveat I have on this book is that it is very focused on the Tomcat and WebLogic web application servers. If that's your platform of choice, you're going to get everything this book has to offer. For me, I'm partial to the WebSphere platform. While I will benefit from a lot of this book, there are chapters that will have no appeal to me, such as using the Ant package. I will also need to pay attention to the coding examples to make sure that the techniques are coded correctly for my platform of choice. Even with that warning, I would still highly recommend this book to all coders working in this area.

Conclusion
This is definitely a title that will be useful to you as you learn more about servlet and JSP programming. It will give you the ideas you need to solve real business problems you'll encounter as a developer.