Early Adopter JSP Standard Tag Library

JavaServer Pages, or JSP, is a Java Enterprise technology which enables web programmers to build pages using special tags which access Java code running on the server. As of JSP 1.1, there has also been the capability to specify custom JSP tag libraries, or taglibs, and many such libraries have been developed to enable developers to integrate different technologies into their JSP applications. The JSP Standard Tag Library, JSTL, is set to standardize the common features of many such libraries into a core set of tags of use to every JSP developer.

The standard tag library provides tags for performing basic decision-making and repetition within a page, as well as localizing messages for the user, handling XML data, and database access. It's also possible to extend the library with our own tags that collaborate with the standard tags. A core element of the library is its support for expression languages, which are used to share and access data between JSP pages.

This book has been developed at the same time as the first release of the JSP standard tag library, and presents a practical overview of what the new tag library allows JSP developers to do.

Jayson Falkner is a full time student at the University of Miami pursuing a degree in Information Technology. He has been programming in Java for the past year and a half and is now focusing on JSP. Jayson is the CTO of Amberjack Software LLC and Webmaster of JSP Insider.

James Hart is a writer and programmer, employed as a Technical Architect on the Early Adopter editorial team at Wrox Press. As well as writing this book, he has also contributed to the Wrox books Professional Java XML and Java XML Programmer's Reference, in both cases writing about IBM's Java-based Web Services platform.

Richard Huss is a Technical Architect in the Java team at Wrox Press, creating titles focusing on J2EE web tier technologies, and can never resist downloading new and interesting open-source Java stuff.

Cindy Nordahl is a software engineer at Lockheed Martin in the Washington D.C. metro area. Cindy recently graduated from Arizona State University with a degree in computer science and is working towards a graduate degree in Software Engineering from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA.