“Murach's Java Servlets and JSPs” third edition looks and reads like a Murach book. This is good. It's always nice when a book delivers what you are expecting. If you haven't read a Murach book before, it is a book meant for beginners. On each set of pages, the left side is text and the right is code/diagrams/references. Each chapter ends with very detailed exercises.
The book begins with the basics but doesn't limit itself to raw servlets and JSP. Chapter 1 explains how Spring and JSF fit into the picture. The book even covers JSF (but not Spring.) I wasn't expecting either to even be mentioned, so this is a nice bonus.
The book tries to cover real world concepts. There was a good bit about security including XSS and SQL injection. I would have liked other security techniques to be alluded to like CSRF. That might be too much to expect in a beginner book though. I haven't seen a beginner book cover XSS before either.
The book is up to date. It includes Java 8, HTML 5, CSS and even MVC. Any self respecting Servlet/JSP book should cover MVC of course. There were good disclaimers of when you should/shouldn't do something. Like that you shouldn't use scriptlets.
There was only one piece of advice I disagreed with in the book – using the Tomcat lib directory. I asked the author about that during the CodeRanch book promotion and he explained that he doesn't endorse that practice and will word it more clearly in the next edition. I'm satisfied with that answer. I also wish he covered tag files. Tag files rock. Minor things that I miss.
Noticing a theme? I'm happy with the book. It covers more than I expected so it whet my appetite for more. It highly recommend this book as your first Java web development book.
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Disclosure: I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for writing this review on behalf of CodeRanch.