113.  The JSP Standard Tag Library

Rev. 1.0

 

This course is now available directly from our partner, Capstone Courseware.

This two-day module introduces the JSTL, or JSP Standard Tag Library, actually a set of four custom tag libraries that establish a portable standard for common processing tasks in JSP.  JSTL is a major part of the new scriptless authoring style encouraged (and enabled) by the JSP 2.0 specification.  This module covers all four JSTL libraries in depth: 

 

·         The core actions, which support JSP expressions for JSP 1.x containers, flow control for procedural processing in JSPs, and resource access

·         The formatting and internationalization/localization actions, which standardize formatted numeric and date/time output as well as multi-language support

·         The SQL actions, which dramatically simplify access to relational data from a JSP

·         The XML actions, which give JSPs a simple, powerful framework by which to parse, address and transform XML data using XPath and XSLT

 

Each individual tag in each library is covered, with precise syntactic rules shown in a standard format in the student guide, and JSTL techniques and best practices are discussed for each library.  An extensive set of example applications illustrates common usage of each major group of actions, and the module culminates with a wrap-up workshop that brings core, SQL, and XML techniques to bear in a single application.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

 

·         Describe the use of the JSP expression language to simplify dynamic page output.

·         Write JSP expressions and implement JSPs that use them in favor of scripts.

·         Implement JSPs that use basic JSTL actions to simplify presentation logic.

·         Decompose a JSP application design into fine-grained, reusable elements including JavaBeans, custom tag handlers and tag files that use JSTL.

·         Use core JSTL actions to complement standard actions, custom actions, and JSP expressions for seamless, script-free page logic.

·         Direct conditional and iterative processing of page content by looping through ranges of numbers, over elements in a collection, or over tokens in a master string.

·         Import external resources by URL for processing, or redirect the JSP container to an external resource to handle the current request.

·         Set locale and time zone information in JSPs, and use them to correctly format numbers, dates and times for all clients.

·         Use resource bundles to manage application strings, and produce the appropriate strings at runtime for a particular client locale.

·         Locate a data source, query for relational data, and parse result sets.

·         Perform updates, inserts and deletes on relational data using SQL actions.

·         Manage queries and updates in transaction contexts.

·         Parse XML content from a variety of sources.

·         Derive information from parsed XML content using XPath expressions.

·         Implement conditional processing and loops based on XML information.

·         Apply XSLT transformations to XML content.

·         Implement a simple Web service that reads and writes SOAP.

 

Duration:  2 days.

 

Prerequisites:  Students should be well-versed in JSP page authoring.  Knowledge of JSP 2.0 is a plus, but is not required;  the module’s primary audience is JSP 1.x authors.

 

1.      JSTL Overview

The JSP Standard Tag Library

The JSP Expression Language

EL Syntax

Type Coercion

Error Handling

Implicit Objects for EL

JSTL Namespaces

Using JSTL in a Page

The Core Actions

Going Scriptless

Object Instantiation

Sharing Objects

Decomposition

Parameterization

 

2.      The Core Actions

The JSTL Core Library

<c:out>

<c:set>

Gotchas

Conditional Processing

Iterative Processing

Iterating Over Maps

Tokenizing Strings

Catching Exceptions

Resource Access

 

3.      The Formatting and i18n Actions

The JSTL Formatting Library

Locales

Determining Locale

Time Zones

Setting Locale and Time Zone

Formatting and Parsing Dates

Formatting and Parsing Numbers

Internationalization

Working with Resource Bundles

Supporting Multiple Languages

 

4.      The SQL Actions

The JSTL SQL Library

Using Relational Data

Connecting with a DriverManager

Connecting via a DataSource

The Result Interface

Making a Query

Inserts, Updates and Deletes

Parameterized SQL

Transactions

 

5.      The XML Actions

The JSTL XML Library

Using XML

XML Data Sources

Parsing and Addressing

Using XPath in JSTL

XPath vs. EL

XPath Context

Implicit Objects for XPath

Conditional Processing

Iterative Processing

Changing XPath Context

Working with XML Namespaces

Using XSLT

Chaining Transformations

Reading XML from the Request Body

XML and SOAP Web Services

 

Appendix. Learning Resources

 

System Requirements

 

This module can be presented on Windows or Linux systems.  Tools required are all free downloadables available for either platform:  the J2SE SDK, the Tomcat 5 Web server, the MySQL RDBMS and a MySQL JDBC driver.  Hardware requirements are modest: a good minimal system for this module would have a Pentium 500MHz or equivalent CPU, 256 meg of RAM and at least 500 megabytes of free disk space for tools installation and lab software.