Core Web Programming, Second Edition

20.4. The JSP page Directive

A JSP directive affects the overall structure of the servlet that results from the JSP page. The following templates show the two possible forms for directives. Single quotes can be substituted for the double quotes around the attribute values, but the quotation marks cannot be omitted altogether. To obtain quote marks within an attribute value, precede them with a back slash, using \'; for ' and \" for ".

<%@ directive attribute="value" %>

<%@ directive attribute1="value1"
              attribute2="value2"
              ...
              attributeN="valueN" %>

In JSP, there are three types of directives: page, include, and taglib. The page directive lets you control the structure of the servlet by importing classes, customizing the servlet superclass, ...