Core JSTL: Mastering the JSP Standard Tag Library

DAVID M. GEARY is the president of Sabreware, Inc., a training and consulting company focusing on server-side Java technology. He has been developing object-oriented software for nearly 20 years and was among the pioneers who worked on the Java platform APIs at Sun Microsystems from 1994 to 1997. Geary is the author of six books on Java technology, including the runaway best-sellingGraphic Javaseries, andAdvanced JavaServer Pages. A member of the expert group that developed more >>

DAVID M. GEARY is the president of Sabreware, Inc., a training and consulting company focusing on server-side Java technology. He has been developing object-oriented software for nearly 20 years and was among the pioneers who worked on the Java platform APIs at Sun Microsystems from 1994 to 1997. Geary is the author of six books on Java technology, including the runaway best-sellingGraphic Javaseries, andAdvanced JavaServer Pages. A member of the expert group that developed JSTL, he is also a contributor to the Apache Struts JSP software application framework and wrote questions for the Web component developer certification exam. Since 1996, he has been a columnist forJava Reportmagazine. He also writesJavaWorld's Java Design Patterns column.

The breakthrough solution for easier, faster, and more powerful Web development.

• Powerful techniques for accelerating, simplifying, and standardizing Web application development
• In-depth coverage of JSTL 1.0, including built-in tags, the new JSTL expression language, and custom tag development
• Written for both experienced Java platform developers and Web page authors
• By the best-selling author of Graphic Java and Advanced JavaServer Pages

Using JSTL, software developers and Web page authors can create robust, flexible Web applications more quickly and easily than ever before. Now, best-selling author and JSTL expert David Geary presents the definitive guide to JSTL: its built-in tags, powerful expression language, and extensibility. Through practical examples and extensive sample code, Geary demonstrates how JSTL simplifies, streamlines, and standardizes a wide range of common Web development tasks and helps you build Web applications far more easily than JavaServer Pages technology alone.

Key topics covered:

• Building HTML forms; accessing form data, JavaBeans components (beans), collections, and maps; constructing URLs and importing their content; redirecting HTTP responses; iterating over collections of objects; handling errors
• Localizing Web sites for multiple languages and countries, including localizing text and formatting and parsing numbers, currencies, percents, and dates.
• Creating and accessing data sources, making queries and iterating over the results; performing database inserts, updates, and deletes; executing database transactions
• Parsing XML documents; using XPath with JSTL custom actions; transforming XML with XSLT, filtering XML; accessing external entities

Core JSTLshows you how to:

• Use JSTL to simplify Web development tasks
• Use the new JSTL expression language
• Access databases and execute transactions
• Develop internationalized Web sites
• Work with XML documents and JSP technology
• Extend JSTL with custom tags

Preface

Until recently, JavaServer Pages (JSP) has, for the most part, been accessible only to Java developers. That's because JSP did not provide a standard set of tags for common functionality or a scripting language for page authors. The lack of those essential features meant that JSP developers had to embed Java code in JSP pages or implement custom tags that encapsulated that Java code. Either way, they had to be well versed in the Java programming language to effectively use JSP.

To implement maintainable and extensible Web applications, developers must decouple business and presentation logic. Without an expression language or standard tag library, JSP pages often contained a great deal of Java code, which allowed easy access to business logic. That Java code and the inevitable related business logic tightly coupled JSP pages with the underlying data model, which resulted in brittle systems that were difficult to modify or extend.

The JSP Standard Tag Library (JSTL) provides a scripting language and set of standard tags that << less