The breakthrough solution for easier, faster, and more powerful Web development.

• Powerful techniques for accelerating, simplifying, and standardizing Web application development
• In-depth coverage of JSTL 1.0, including built-in tags, the new JSTL expression language, and custom tag development
• Written for both experienced Java platform developers and Web page authors
• By the best-selling author of Graphic Java and Advanced JavaServer Pages

Using JSTL, software developers and Web page authors can create robust, flexible Web applications more quickly and easily than ever before. Now, best-selling author and JSTL expert David Geary presents the definitive guide to JSTL: its built-in tags, powerful expression language, and extensibility. Through practical examples and extensive sample code, Geary demonstrates how JSTL simplifies, streamlines, and standardizes a wide range of common Web development tasks and helps you build Web applications far more easily than JavaServer Pages technology alone.

Key topics covered:

• Building HTML forms; accessing form data, JavaBeans components (beans), collections, and maps; constructing URLs and importing their content; redirecting HTTP responses; iterating over collections of objects; handling errors
• Localizing Web sites for multiple languages and countries, including localizing text and formatting and parsing numbers, currencies, percents, and dates.
• Creating and accessing data sources, making queries and iterating over the results; performing database inserts, updates, and deletes; executing database transactions
• Parsing XML documents; using XPath with JSTL custom actions; transforming XML with XSLT, filtering XML; accessing external entities

Core JSTL shows you how to:

• Use JSTL to simplify Web development tasks
• Use the new JSTL expression language
• Access databases and execute transactions
• Develop internationalized Web sites
• Work with XML documents and JSP technology
• Extend JSTL with custom tags

The JSP standard tag library (JSTL) provides a scripting language and set of standard tags that make JSP accessible to page authors and allows the separation of the business and presentation layers. This book examines the JSTL expression language in detail, and shows how to perform tasks for JSP-based web applications, such as setting bean properties and map entries, iterating over strings and arrays, importing the content of a URL-based resource, accessing configuration settings, formatting and parsing numbers, and querying a database. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

JSTL will be hugely popular because it simplifies the creation of complex data-driven applications. Geary's book explains how developers can access databases and manipulate and transform XML documents from within JSP pages.

Core JSTL is an in-depth examination of the JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library (JSTL), which provides a standard set of custom tags--including tags for iteration, accessing URLs, database access, internationalization, and the manipulation and transformation of XML documents--that Web page authors and software developers can use to develop Web sites. The book illustrates JSTL's capabilities with lots of code snippet and examples. These examples are creative and practical combinations of tags you can use right now! An advanced part of the book covers JSTL configuration and integration of Java code with JSTL. JSTL defines an expression language that facilitates Web site development by providing an alternative to Java code in Web pages. The JSTL expression language also allows easy access to data such as request parameters and attributes, cookies, and HTML headers. Core JSTL examines all aspects of this powerful new addition to the JavaServer Pages standard, and is written for page authors and software developers alike. JSTL is a Java standard for developing dynamic web sites. It gives non-programmers access to powerful operations through HTML-like tags.

DAVID M. GEARY is the president of Sabreware, Inc., a training and consulting company focusing on server-side Java technology. He has been developing object-oriented software for nearly 20 years and was among the pioneers who worked on the Java platform APIs at Sun Microsystems from 1994 to 1997. Geary is the author of six books on Java technology, including the runaway best-selling Graphic Java series, and Advanced JavaServer Pages. A member of the expert group that developed JSTL, he is also a contributor to the Apache Struts JSP software application framework and wrote questions for the Web component developer certification exam. Since 1996, he has been a columnist for Java Report magazine. He also writes JavaWorld's Java Design Patterns column.

Preface.

Acknowledgments.

1. Introduction.

2. The JSTL Expression Language.

3. General-Purpose and Conditional Actions.

4. Iteration Actions.

5. Url Actions.

6. Configuration Settings.

7. I18N Actions.

8. Formatting Actions.

9. Database Actions.

10. XML Actions.

11. JSTL Reference.

Appendix A. Setting Up The MySQL Database Used In This Book.

Index.