In my opinion, developing a Web based application in JSP (Java) is more or less like killing a housefly with a bazooka. Of course you will hit your target, no one is denying that, but you will also have collateral damage along with it. This damage ranges from Cost of hardware, hosting, servers and development. Not to mention the time taken to develop, edit or modify the application.

But, that’s just me, I’ll let you to decide and let me know after going through these factors.

SNO	Function / Feature	JSP	PHP
1.	Programming Approach	1. Completely Object Oriented Advantage: · Clean code Disadvantage: · Way too descriptive	1. Mainly a Scripting Language 2. It can also be used in OOPS from PHP 5 and above. Advantage: · Functional and quick coding, you can use OOP practices at your convenience Disadvantage: · May get clumsy
2.	String and data manipulation	Rich library, too much descriptive and object oriented code	Rich functionality. Functional and easy coding. Has inbuilt support to use third party libraries from other programming languages like Java, C and Dot.net
3.	Web Oriented features Includes Mails File Uploads Form Handling Sessions	Advantage: · Almost everything is built in or supported by libraries. Disadvantage: · Complicated and way too much of code.	Advantages: · Inbuilt functionality and easy to use functions, written for the specific tasks · Reduces the lines of code and time taken to write an application.
4.	Database Access features	Standard JDBC structure/ Use EJB/ Struts framework built over JDBC. Descriptive and too much overhead or boiler plate code involved. Uses the same API for all databases using JDBC drivers	Dedicated inbuilt libraries for most of the commonly used databases. Very tight integration with Oracle, MySQL and PostGRE SQL. Very minimal boiler plate code required. The libraries and results are straight forward, robust and easy to use.
5.	XML/XSL/XPATH	Use standard SAX/DOM parsers. Too much boiler plate code involved. Well defined APIs and stable implementations are available for XSL and XPATH	SAX and DOM parsers available are easy to use and to the point. Another library, Simple XML provides very easy OO approach to handling XML data. XSL and XPATH functionality is also built in.
6.	Extensibility	Java Classes and Libraries. Run’s in sandbox and hard JNI approach needed to integrate with server programs.	PHP/C/Any thing executable by the underlying OS platform. Can very easily interact with programs on the server. Very good support for native code.
7.	Dynamic Graphics/PDF and bells and whistles	Almost everything has a readymade library	Supported internally or though libraries.
8.	Web Services/SOAP	Addon Libraries like Axis, JAX-WS, etc.	In Built
9.	Portals	Spec JSR-168 and 286	Many different Portal frameworks
10.	Learning curve	It helps if you have an decent understanding of JAVA and its architecture.	If you know C/C++, then you are halfway through to learn PHP.
11.	Support	It has support and backing of Industry giants like Sun and IBM.	It enjoys the backing of Oracle, Sun, IBM, Microsoft and Zend.
12.	Hardware cost and requirement.	Well this is one factor which makes PHP a favourite. The cost of procuring a server is exponentially higher than that of getting PHP server up and running.	Cost of hosting a small and medium scale PHP application start from as low as $9 per month. For a decent enterprise level application server with an enterprise PHP framework, the cost would come out to be around $50 per month.

Sample Codes for comparison

_1._{Hello World}

_JSP

_PHP

_<html>

_{<head>

<title>JSP — Hello World!</title>}

_{</head>

<body>}

_{<% out.println(” Hello World”); %> !}

_{</body>

</html>}

_<html>

_{<head>

<title>PHP — Hello World!</title>}

_{</head>

<body>}

_{<?php echo ”Hello World”; ?>}

_{</body>

</html>}

_2._{Print Date as DD/MM/YYYY}

_JSP

_PHP

_<html>

_{<head>

<title>JSP – Print date</title>}

_{</head>

<body>}

_<%

_{java.util.Calendar cal =java.util.Calendar.getInstance();}

_out.println(

_{new SimpleDateFormat(“dd/MM/yyyy).format(cal.getTime()?)}

_);

_%>_{</body>

</html>}

_<html>

_{<head>

<title>PHP – Print Date</title>}

_{</head>

<body>}

_{<?php echo date(“d/m/Y”); ?>}

_{</body>

</html>}

_3._{Read / Write session variable}

_JSP

_PHP

_<html>

_{<head>

<title>JSP – Session Read/Write</title>}

_{</head>

<body>}

_<%

_{//Get current session or create a new session}

_{HtppSession session = request.getSession(true);}

_{//Add information to the session}

_{session.setAttribute(“name”, “Pramati”);}

_{//Print the information}

_{out.println(session.getAttribute(“name”);}

_%>

_{</body>

</html>}

_<html>

_{<head>

<title>PHP – Session Read/Write</title>}

_{</head>

<body>}

_<?php

_{//Get current session or create a new session}

_{session_start();}

_{//Add information to the session}

_{$_SESSION['name']= “Pramati”;}

_{//Print the information}

_{echo $_SESSION['name'];}

_?>

_{</body>

</html>}

_4.

_a._{File Uploading - Form}

_JSP

_PHP

_<html>

_{<head>

<title>JSP – File upload form</title>}

_{</head>

<body>}

_{<form action=”ProcessFileUpload.jsp” method=”post” enctype=”multipart/form-data”>}

_{File 1:<input type=”file” name=”file1″/>}

_<br/>

_{<input type=”submit” name=”Submit” value=”Upload File”/>}

_</form>

_{</body>

</html>}

_{Please Note: No in-built support for file uploading in JSP. You have to rely on external libraries. This example uses Apache’s commons-upload lib.}

_<html>

_{<head>

<title>PHP – File upload form</title>}

_{</head>

<body>}

_{<form action=”ProcessFileUpload.php” method=”post” enctype=”multipart/form-data”>}

_{File 1:<input type=”file” name=”file1″/>}

_<br/>

_{<input type=”submit” name=”Submit” value=”Upload File”/>}

_</form>

_{</body>

</html>}

_4.

_b._{File Uploading – Backend Code}

_JSP

_PHP

_{Code for ProcessFileUpload.jsp}

_<%

_{if(ServletFileUpload.isMultipartContent(request))}_?

_{FileItemFactory f = new DiskFileItemFactory();}

_{ServletFileUpload upload = new ServletFileUpload(f);}

_{List items = upload.parseRequest(request);}

_{Iterator itemsIter = items.getIterator();}

_{if(iter.hasNext())}_?

_{File uploadedFile = new File(item.getName());}

_{item.write(uploadedFile);}

_%>

_{Please Note: No in-built support for file uploading in JSP. You have to rely on external libraries. This example uses Apache’s commons-upload lib.}

_{Code for ProcessFileUpload.php}

_<?php

_{if ($_FILES["file"]["error"] > 0)}_?

_{echo “Error: ” . $_FILES["file"]["error"];}

_else

_{move_uploaded_file(}

_{$_FILES["file"]["tmp_name"],}

_{“upload/” . $_FILES["file"]["name"]);}

_?>

_5._{Connect to the Database (MySql)}

_JSP

_PHP

_{<%@ page import=”java.sql.*” %>}

_<%

_{Connetion conn = null;}

_{java.sql.Connection conn= null;}

_{Statement st = null;}

_{ResultSet rs = null;}

_{try {}

_{Class.forName(”com.mysql.jdbc.Driver”).newInstance();}

_{Class.forName(”org.gjt.mm.mysql.Driver”).newInstance();}

_{conn = DriverManager.getConnection( “jdbc:mysql://localhost/jsp?user=xxx&password=xxx”);}

_{st = conn.createStatement();}

_{// connection made….

}}

_<?php

_{$dbserver=”locations”;}

_{$username=”username”;

$password=”password”;

$database=”your_database”;}

_{mysql_connect($dbserver,$username,$password);

@mysql_select_db($database) or die( “Unable to select database”);}

_//connection_made…

_?>

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3 Comments so far (Add 1 more)

Differece btween jsp and php

1. Divyesh on November 1st, 2008 at 11:24 AM
Hi Josh,

Thanks for sharing your views. Well, I am just trying to compare JSP and PHP head to head. Logic being separate from presentation (MVC) holds true for PHP too. The standard way is to use a framework (Zend ,Cake etc ) to make sure your business logic is handled by different set of files.

Having said that, the point I am trying to make is that for the same task, the lines of code in Pure PHP will always be less that that of JSP/Servelets.
No Offence

2. rochakchauhan on October 30th, 2008 at 6:39 AM
Using JSP tags is not standard practice. All business logic should be handled server side, and JSTL tags should be used to display dynamic values in the web page.

3. Josh on October 29th, 2008 at 8:58 PM