Java, JSP, & Cookies

[rbragg]

I am new to all of the above as my language of choice is PHP. I am tinkering with JSF and have a file where I am creating a persistent cookie, tracking how many times a page is visited by a particular user. I want to display the number of hits when the page loads.

This incorrect code is what I have so far for the event-processing:

public void prerender() {
  Cookie cookie = new Cookie(hitsResult);
  HttpServletResponse response = (HttpServletResponse) getExternalContext().getResponse();
  response.addCookie(cookie);
}

... where hitsResult is my JSP component. I'm not even sure if I should be doing it in the prerender method. I'd also like the cookie to expire in a month.

Could anyone direct me?
Thanks!