RI for the JSP™ Standard Tag Library (JSTL)

Release: Early Access 3 (EA3)

Thanks for downloading the JSTL EA3 release. We hope you find the tags, documents, and examples here of interest. We're curious to hear your feedback on this release, which represents work in progress toward a standard JSP Tag Library. Please contact us at

	jsr052-comments@sun.com

with any comments you might have.

Included in this distibution:

Documentation ('doc/web' directory)

• Getting Started: A quick roadmap to help you get started with this release.
• Overview: An overview of JSTL's design philosophy and current syntax.
• Release Notes: Changes since EA1, and other historical information.
• Functional descriptions: Technical guides representing the design considerations and functionality of JSTL's tag set. Note that these are not formal specifications, just technical overviews of functionality and intent.
  • Iteration
  • Conditional logic
  • Expression-language support
  • Expression-language tags
    • The Simplest Possible Expression Language (SPEL)
    • EcmaScript as an Expression Language for JSTL
  • Import tags
  • XML tags
    • core
    • control flow
    • transformation
  • I18N & Formatting tags
  • SQL (database access) tags

Examples ('examples' directory)

The JSTL-examples application included with this distribution demonstrates the current capabilities of JSTL, exploring idioms and usage patterns when appropriate.

Reference implementation ('src' and 'conf' directories)

Every effort has been made to provide a functional, robust, and speedy reference implementation (RI) for the current functionality JSTL offers. For developers, the code is commented thoroughly to help provide an understanding of design considerations and salient implementation details.

Classes in the javax.servlet.JSTL represent the current draft of the JSTL API classes. Classes under org.apache.* represent the reference implementation, expected to be released through Jakarta Taglibs. The package structure for the RI is organized as follows:

  org.apache.taglibs.standard
   .tag         tag handlers and routines related to them
      .common      handlers and support routines common for RT/EL attributes
          .core    core library (common)
          .fmt     internationalization-capable formatting tags (common)
          .xml     XML manipulation library (common)
	  .sql	   SQL library (common)
      .el          handlers specific to expression language (EL) evaluation
          .core    core library (EL)
          .fmt     internationalization-capable formatting tags (EL)
          .xml     XML manipulation library (EL)
	  .sql	   SQL library (EL)
      .rt          handlers specific to rtexprvalue (rt) evaluation
          .core    core library (rt)
          .fmt     internationalization-capable formatting tags (rt)
          .xml     XML manipulation library (rt)
	  .sql	   SQL library (rt)
   .tei         TagExtraInfo classes (common to both libraries)
   .tlv         TagLibraryValidator classes (and associated helpers)
   .lang        expression-language support and implementation
      .dummy       dummy ExpressionEvaluator
      .support     ExpressionEvaluator, ExpressionEvaluatorManager
      .spel        SPEL
      .jpath       JPath
      .jxpath      JXPath
      .javascript  ECMAScript (JavaScript/Rhino)

Enjoy!

   -- JSR-052 (JSTL) Expert Group
      (jsr052-comments@sun.com)