NetBeans/JPA Web Application Tutorial

This is the NetBeans version of the JPA Web App tutorial. It demonstrates how to create and run a database driven Java web application in NetBeans - using Tomcat 6 Apache Tomcat Server 6.0 (some modifications are needed for Tomcat 7.0), ObjectDB and JPA.

The demo web application manages a basic guestbook page. Every visitor can sign the guestbook by filling a simple form. The visitors that have already signed are listed below the form:

Persistence is managed by JPA. Every visitor that has signed the guestbook is represented by a Guest entity object and all the Guest entity objects are stored in an ObjectDB database.

Required Software

For this tutorial you will need the following software:

• Java JDK (6.0 or above).
• NetBeans - Java or All bundle
• The last version of ObjectDB (just download and extract).

The tutorial was written for NetBeans 6.9.1 but it should work with other NetBeans versions as well (dialog boxes and menus might look slightly different but the code would be the same).

The Tutorial Steps

This tutorial consists of the following steps:

• Step 1: Create a Web Project
• Step 2: Define a JPA Entity Class
• Step 3: Add a Context Listener Class
• Step 4: Add a Servlet Class
• Step 5: Add a JSP Page
• Step 6: Run the Web Application