Chapter 8Writing Custom Tag and Function Libraries

IN THIS CHAPTER

  • All about TLDs, tag files, and tag handlers
  • Creating an HTML template using a tag file
  • How to create a more useful date formatting tag handler
  • Abbreviating strings using an EL function
  • How to replace Java code with custom JSP tags

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

You can find the wrox.com code downloads for this chapter at www.wrox.com/go/projavaforwebapps on the Download Code tab. The code for this chapter is divided into the following major examples:

  • c.tld
  • fn.tld
  • Template-Tags Project
  • Customer-Support-v6 Project

NEW MAVEN DEPENDENCIES FOR THIS CHAPTER

In addition to the Maven dependencies introduced in previous chapters, you also need the following Maven dependency:

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.commons</groupId>
            <artifactId>commons-lang3</artifactId>
            <version>3.1</version>
            <scope>compile</scope>
        </dependency>

UNDERSTANDING TLDS, TAG FILES, AND TAG HANDLERS

In Chapter 7 you explored the Java Standard Tag Library (JSTL) and also got a brief introduction to the Tag Library Descriptor (TLD), a special file that describes the tags and/or functions in a library. In this chapter you learn more about the TLD and how tags and functions are declared within them. You also learn how to create tag handlers and tag files.

All JSP tags result in execution of some tag handler. The tag handler is an implementation of javax.servlet.jsp.tagext.Tag or javax.servlet.jsp.tagext.SimpleTag and contains the Java ...

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