2.2. Eliminating Tag Library Declarations

Problem

You want to avoid having to add taglib elements to the web.xml file every time you want to use a new tag library.

Solution

Create a JSP file containing taglib directives that refer to the absolute URIs for the tag libraries you are using. Example 2-4 (taglibs.inc.jsp) shows a JSP file containing the taglib declarations for the Struts bean, html, and logic tag libraries as well as the JSTL core and formatting tag libraries.

Example 2-4. Common tag library declarations

<%@ page contentType="text/html;charset=UTF-8" language="java" %>
<%@ taglib uri="http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/tags-bean" prefix="bean" %>
<%@ taglib uri="http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/tags-html" prefix="html" %>
<%@ taglib uri="http://jakarta.apache.org/struts/tags-logic" prefix="logic" %>
<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/core" prefix="c" %>
<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/fmt" prefix="fmt" %>

Then include this file in all of your JSP pages using the include directive:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

<!-- start taglib -->
<%@ include file="/includes/taglibs.inc.jsp" %>
<!-- end taglib -->

<html:html>
  <body>
    ...

Since you are using the absolute URIs in the taglib directive, you aren't required to enter a corresponding taglib element in the application's web.xml file.

Discussion

If you are using a JSP 1.2/Servlet 2.3 compliant container, such as Tomcat 4.x or later, you can use an absolute URI in the taglib directive on the ...

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