Posted in: Servlets FAQs
The
init method is designed to be called only once. It is called when the
servlet is first created, and not called again for each user request.
So, it is used for one-time initializations, just as with the init
method of applets.
The
servlet is normally created when a user first invokes a URL
corresponding to the servlet, but you can also specify that the servlet
be loaded when the server is first started.
When
a user invokes a servlet, a single instance of each servlet gets
created, with each user request resulting in a new thread that is handed
off to doGet or doPost as appropriate. The init() method simply creates
or loads some data that will be used throughout the life of the
servlet.
The init method definition looks like this:
public void init() throws ServletException {
// Initialization code...
}