What is the need of Servlet filters?

Servlet filters are pluggable java components that are used to process requests before the requests are sent to the servlets and before a container sends the response back to the client.

Some tasks performed with filters are:

• Logging request parameters to log files.
• Authorization of request for services
• The arrangement of request body and header before sending it to a servlet.
• Condense the response data sent to client
• Add cookies, header information etc. In response.