The Nested Tag Library Tags

 < Day Day Up > 



The following table lists each of the tags in the Nested Tag Library and provides a short description of each tag’s purpose.

Tag

Description

checkbox

Nesting-enabled version of the HTML Tag Library’s checkbox tag.

define

Nesting-enabled version of the Bean Tag Library’s define tag.

empty

Nesting-enabled version of the Logic Tag Library’s empty tag.

equal

Nesting-enabled version of the Logic Tag Library’s equal tag.

errors

Nesting-enabled version of the HTML Tag Library’s errors tag.

file

Nesting-enabled version of the HTML Tag Library’s file tag.

form

Nesting-enabled version of the HTML Tag Library’s form tag.

greaterEqual

Nesting-enabled version of the Logic Tag Library’s greaterEqual tag.

greaterThan

Nesting-enabled version of the Logic Tag Library’s greaterThan tag.

hidden

Nesting-enabled version of the HTML Tag Library’s hidden tag.

image

Nesting-enabled version of the HTML Tag Library’s image tag.

img

Nesting-enabled version of the HTML Tag Library’s img tag.

iterate

Nesting-enabled version of the Logic Tag Library’s iterate tag.

lessEqual

Nesting-enabled version of the Logic Tag Library’s lessEqual tag.

lessThan

Nesting-enabled version of the Logic Tag Library’s lessThan tag.

link

Nesting-enabled version of the HTML Tag Library’s link tag.

match

Nesting-enabled version of the Logic Tag Library’s match tag.

message

Nesting-enabled version of the Bean Tag Library’s message tag.

messages

Nesting-enabled version of the HTML Tag Library’s messages tag.

messagesNotPresent

Nesting-enabled version of the Logic Tag Library’s messagesNotPresent tag.

messagesPresent

Nesting-enabled version of the Logic Tag Library’s messagesPresent tag.

multibox

Nesting-enabled version of the HTML Tag Library’s multibox tag.

nest

Defines a logical level in a nesting hierarchy and associates an object with it that all of its nested tags will be relative to.

notEmpty

Nesting-enabled version of the Logic Tag Library’s notEmpty tag.

notEqual

Nesting-enabled version of the Logic Tag Library’s notEqual tag.

notMatch

Nesting-enabled version of the Logic Tag Library’s notMatch tag.

notPresent

Nesting-enabled version of the Logic Tag Library’s notPresent tag.

options

Nesting-enabled version of the HTML Tag Library’s options tag.

optionsCollection

Nesting-enabled version of the HTML Tag Library’s optionsCollection tag.

password

Nesting-enabled version of the HTML Tag Library’s password tag.

present

Nesting-enabled version of the Logic Tag Library’s present tag.

radio

Nesting-enabled version of the HTML Tag Library’s radio tag.

root

Defines the root object of a nested hierarchy of objects.

select

Nesting-enabled version of the HTML Tag Library’s select tag.

size

Nesting-enabled version of the Bean Tag Library’s size tag.

submit

Nesting-enabled version of the HTML Tag Library’s submit tag.

text

Nesting-enabled version of the HTML Tag Library’s text tag.

textarea

Nesting-enabled version of the HTML Tag Library’s textarea tag.

write

Nesting-enabled version of the Bean Tag Library’s write tag.

writeNesting

Renders or creates a JSP scripting variable for a string representation of the object related to the current nesting level.

As mentioned, the majority of the tags in the Nested Tag Library are simply tags from the Bean, HTML, and Logic tag libraries to which support for nesting has been added. Thus, they are not individually covered in detail here. Instead, the basic concepts of nesting are discussed because they apply to all the extended tags in the same way. For nonnesting-related information on each of the extended tags, see the descriptions of their base tags in their respective chapters.

The remainder of this section discusses in detail each of the tags that are specific to the Nesting Tag Library, including a complete description of the tag, a table listing each of the tag’s attributes, and a usage example for the tag. In the tables that describe each tag’s attributes, pay special attention to the Required and Accepts Scriptlet columns.

The Required column simply denotes whether or not the given attribute is required when using the tag. If an attribute is required and you do not specify it when using the tag, the tag will throw a javax.servlet.jsp.JspException at run time. Note that you can declare an error page in your JSP with a page directive to capture any JspExceptions that might be thrown, as shown here:

<%@ page errorPage="error.jsp" %>

If an exception occurs, the page specified by the errorPage attribute will be internally redirected to display an error page.

The Accepts Scriptlet column denotes whether or not the given attribute’s value can be specified with a JSP scriptlet. If a JSP scriptlet is used to specify an attribute value, the scriptlet must comprise the complete value, quote (“) to quote (“), as shown here.

Correct:

<nested:nest property="<%=result%>">

Incorrect:

<nested:nest property="<%=result%>-result"> 

Notice in the incorrect example that “-result” is used as part of the value for the property attribute following the scriptlet. This is invalid because there are extra characters between the end of the scriptlet and the ending quote.

A corrected version of the incorrect example follows:

<nested:nest property="<%=result + "-result"%>"/>

The concatenation of “-result” is now part of the scriptlet and the scriptlet comprises the complete value for the attribute.

The nest Tag

The nest tag is used to define a logical level in a nesting hierarchy and associate an object with it that all of its nested tags are relative to.

Attribute

Attribute

Description

Accepts Scriptlet

Required

property

Specifies the name of the object (in any scope) to associate with this logical nesting level.

Yes

No

Example Usage

The following example illustrates how to use the nest tag:

<nested:nest property="address">   Line 1: <nested:text property="line1"/>   Line 2: <nested:text property="line2"/>   City: <nested:text property="city"/>   State: <nested:text property="state"/>   Zip: <nested:text property="zip"/> </nested:nest>

Because the nest tag specifies the object that all of its nested tags are relative to, the nested tags only have to specify properties of the nested object.

The equivalent without the Nested Tag Library is shown here:

Line 1: <html:text property="address.line1"/> Line 2: <html:text property="address.line2"/> City: <html:text property="address.city"/> State: <html:text property="address.state"/> Zip: <html:text property="address.zip"/> 

As you can see, nesting simplifies JSP development for even this short example; however, the real benefit comes when you have several layers of nesting to handle.

The root Tag

The root tag is used to define the root object of a nested hierarchy of objects. Typically, tags from this tag library and the HTML Tag Library are nested inside the HTML Tag Library’s form tag and use the form’s Form Bean object as the root of the nested hierarchy. However, the root tag can be used to explicitly set the hierarchy’s root object, effectively overriding the Form Bean object.

Attribute

Attribute

Description

Accepts Scriptlet

Required

name

Specifies the name of an object (in any scope) to set as the root of a nested hierarchy.

Yes

No

Example Usage

The following example illustrates how to use the root tag:

<nested:root name="employee">   <nested:nest property="address">     Line 1: <nested:text property="line1"/>     Line 2: <nested:text property="line2"/>     City: <nested:text property="city"/>     State: <nested:text property="state"/>     Zip: <nested:text property="zip"/>   </nested:nest> </nested:root>

All tags nested inside the root tag will use its associated object as the root object for a nested hierarchy. Thus, in the example, the nested text tags will actually be accessing “employee.address.line1” even though they only specify “line1”.

The writeNesting Tag

The writeNesting tag is used to render or create a JSP scripting variable for a string representation of the object related to the current nesting level.

Attributes

Attribute

Description

Accepts Scriptlet

Required

property

Specifies the name of a property of the current nesting level’s object.

Yes

No

id

Specifies the name of the JSP variable that will hold a reference to the object related to the current nesting level.

Yes

No

filter

Accepts “true” or “false” to denote whether or not HTML-sensitive characters should be converted to their entity equivalents. For example, if this attribute is enabled, the less than sign (<) would get converted to &lt; before it is rendered.Defaults to “true.”

Yes

No

Example Usage

The following snippet shows the basic usage of the writeNesting tag:

<nested:nest property="address">   Line 1: <nested:writeNesting property="line1"/> </nested:nest>

This example will generate the following output:

Line 1: address.line1

Essentially, this tag generates the fully qualified nested reference for the given property.



 < Day Day Up > 



Struts. The Complete Reference
Struts: The Complete Reference, 2nd Edition
ISBN: 0072263865
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 134
Authors: James Holmes

flylib.com © 2008-2017.
If you may any questions please contact us: flylib@qtcs.net