JavaServer Pages, 3rd Edition

Name

Attribute Directive

Synopsis

This directive can only be used in tag files. It declares the attributes the tag file supports.

Syntax

<%@ attribute name="attrName" 
  [description="description"] [required="true|false"]
  [fragment="true|false" | [type="attrDataType"] [rtexprvalue="true|false"]]
%>

Attributes

Attribute name	Default	Description
description	No default	A description of the attribute that can be presented to a page author by an authoring tool.
fragment	false	Set to true if the attribute represents a fragment, set by a <jsp:attribute> element. If false, the attribute is converted to the type specified by the type attribute.
name	No default	The attribute name.
required	false	Set to true if the page author must provide an attribute value.
rtexprvalue	true	Set to false if the attribute value must be provided as a static text value. If true, the attribute can be set by an EL or Java expression or a <jsp:attribute> element, evaluated at runtime.
type	String	The attribute data type. Primitive types are not supported, only Java classes and interfaces.

When the fragment attribute is used, the rtexprvalue and type attributes must not be used. For a fragment, a runtime expression value is always accepted and the type is fixed to javax.servlet.jsp.tagext.JspFragment.

Example

<%@ attribute name="date" type="java.util.Date" %>
<%@ attribute name="pattern" fragment="true" %>