[GROOVY-5227] AbstractHttpServlet should extend GenericServlet directly instead of HttpServlet

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Open
• Priority: Trivial
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Affects Version/s: 1.7.5
• Component/s: Groovlet / GSP
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Benjamin Gandon
• Created: 04/Jan/12 04:48
• Updated: 23/Jun/17 14:45

Description

The groovy.servlet.AbstractHttpServlet class overrides the service(HttpServletRequest, HttpServletResponse) method.

Thus all the circuitry implemented in the javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet superclass is bypassed altogether, except the trivial service(ServletRequest, ServletResponse) method which only provides a convenient call to service(HttpServletRequest, HttpServletResponse), narrowing the request and response types to HTTP-dedicated subclasses.

None of the doGet, getLastModified, doHead, doPost, doPut, doDelete, doOption, doTrace, is ever called. Are they relevant to any AbstractHttpServlet subclasses? I doubt so. The programming model of GroovyServlet currently implies re-implementing in Groovlets the way these HTTP methods should be answered.

Then it might be a possible optimization to have AbstractHttpServlet extend GenericServlet directly, re-implementing in AbstractHttpServlet the trivial service(ServletRequest, ServletResponse) method of HttpServlet. This could prevent the unnecessary loading of the HttpServlet class in memory.