APIs and Struts

Google Maps API - Google Maps offers an excellent API to geolocate, geocode, and map locations. Geocoding can be very useful for determining distances between locations for online mapping applications. More information can be found here: https://developers.google.com/maps/web/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. and https://developers.google.com/maps/articles/phpsqlsearch_v3 (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
- Don't forget about HTML5's built-in geolocation API for using GPS to automatically locate a user!
JavaServer page is a type of text document that contains static and dynamic text. The static text works like regular HTML, where data remains the same on the page. Dynamic text is the part of JSP that allows developers to call and run Java code to dynamically generate new data as the page runs. The JSP documents are fully supported by Microsoft Azure web application when Java is selected as the server language. The JSP runs on Java version 1.7.0_51.
What is a JSP: http://docs.oracle.com/javaee/5/tutorial/doc/bnagy.html (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
JSP Tutorial: http://www.tutorialspoint.com/jsp/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Apache Tomcat is an open-source web server that can run several Java-based documents, like JSP, and provide a local web server environment for Java code to run in. Microsoft Azure can also use Tomcat as its web application server, which is the reason it was chosen. If the project is able to run in the same server setup in the local environment, it reduces the risk of running into compatibility issues when the project is deployed to both the staging and production environments in Azure. Both Azure and the local Tomcat server are version 7.0.5.
Apache Struts2 is an open-source web application framework that helps format Java web applications. It uses a model-view-controller (MVC) software structure, which is an application architecture pattern that divides a given application into three interconnected parts so that a user can understand the code at a higher level.
Apache Struts Website: https://struts.apache.org/ (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
How to Start JSP and Struts 2: https://struts.apache.org/docs/hello-world-using-struts-2.html (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
Struts.xml is the file that indirectly associates how each JSP page corresponds with each Java action class. Whenever a web page is transitioning to a new page, an action would be called by JSP. The struts.xml contains the mapping of each action to the Java file that will perform the action. The action can either be a “success” or “failure,” and the pages are redirected accordingly.
How to use Salesforce REST API with PHP sample code: http://developer.force.com/cookbook/recipe/interact-with-the-forcecom-rest-api-from-php (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.
MapQuest Developer API: API with geocoding and mapping functionality. Similar to Google Maps API, but with a significantly higher free-tier limit.