Glossary

A component that listens on a network port for incoming connections. Connectors are associated with one or more ConnectionFactory instances that create protocol-specific connections (HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2, HTTP/3). See Jetty Server for server configuration.

A LifeCycle implementation that can contain other components (beans). It manages the lifecycle of its managed beans, starting and stopping them together with the container. See Jetty Component Architecture for the component architecture.

A Handler that scopes HTTP requests to a specific context path. It provides the foundation for web application deployment, managing attributes, MIME types, and class loaders. See Web Application Deployment for deployment information.

An XML configuration file used to deploy web applications in Jetty. Context XML files use Jetty’s XML configuration syntax to instantiate and configure ContextHandler instances. See Jetty XML for XML configuration syntax and Web Application Deployment for deployment examples.

The fundamental abstraction for processing HTTP requests in Jetty. Handlers form a tree structure where requests flow from the server through various handlers. A handler returns true if it handled the request, false otherwise. See Server Libraries for the server programming guide.

The directory containing your Jetty server customizations and configurations. You can have multiple $JETTY_BASE directories, each with different configurations, all referencing the same $JETTY_HOME. See Architecture Overview for details.

The directory containing the Jetty distribution binaries and default configuration. This directory should not be modified; all customizations should go in $JETTY_BASE. See Architecture Overview for details.

An interface implemented by Jetty components that can be started and stopped. Components implementing LifeCycle participate in the container’s lifecycle management. See Component Lifecycle for details.

A reusable unit that provides one or more Jetty features. Modules are enabled in $JETTY_BASE and declare dependencies on other modules. Examples include http, https, http2, deploy, and logging. See Jetty Modules for the module system documentation.

The root component of a Jetty server application. It contains connectors, handlers, and thread pools, forming the top of the component tree. See Jetty Server for server configuration.

The standard TCP/IP connector implementation for accepting network connections. It supports multiple protocols through ConnectionFactory instances. See Jetty Server for connector configuration.

A component that manages worker threads for processing requests. The default implementation is QueuedThreadPool. See Jetty Threading Architecture for thread architecture details.

A collection of code, resources, and configuration deployed to a Jetty server. Web applications can be Jakarta EE applications (WAR files), Jetty Core applications (using Handler APIs), or static file applications. Each web application is deployed to a specific context path. See Web Application Deployment for deployment options.

A ContextHandler subclass specifically for Jakarta EE web applications. It handles WAR file extraction, web.xml parsing, and servlet lifecycle management. See Web Application Deployment for deployment information.