Head First Servlets and JSP, 2nd Edition

What if you need a tag that’s NOT in JSTL?

The JSTL is huge. Version 1.1 has five libraries—four with custom tags, and one with a bunch of functions for String manipulation. The tags we cover in this book (which happen to be the ones you’re expected to know for the exam) are for the generic things you’re most likely to need, but it’s possible that between all five libraries, you’ll find everything you might ever need. On the next page, we’ll start looking at what happens when the tags below aren’t enough.

Note

The “Core” library

General-purpose

<c:out>
<c:set>
<c:remove>
<c:catch>

Conditional

<c:if>
<c:choose>
<c:when>
<c:otherwise>

URL related

<c:import>
<c:url>
<c:redirect>
<c:param>

Iteration

<c:forEach>
<c:forTokens>

We didn’t cover this one... it lets you iterate over tokens where YOU give it the delimiter. Works a lot like StringTokenizer. We also didn’t cover <c:redirect>, but that gives you a wonderful excuse to get the JSTL docs.

The “Formatting” library

Internationalization

<fmt:message>
<fmt:setLocale>
<fmt:bundle>
<fmt:setBundle>
<fmt:param>
<fmt:requestEncoding>

Formatting

<fmt:timeZone>
<fmt:setTimeZone>
<fmt:formatNumber>
<fmt:parseNumber>
<fmt:parseDate>

The “SQL” library

Database access

<sql:query>
<sql:update>
<sql:setDataSource>
<sql:param>
<sql:dateParam>

The “XML” library

Core XML actions

<x:parse>
<x:out>
<x:set>

XML flow control

<x:if>
<x:choose>
<x:when>
<x:otherwise>
<x:forEach>

Transform actions

<x:transform>
<x:param>

Relax

Only the “core” library is covered on the exam.

The “core” ...