Essentially, those null checks you're hesitant to sprinkle all over your page is exactly what you're going to need to do if you're just using standard scriptlets.
Obviously, the evolution was to create a custom tag or something that embeds this type of logic, so it's reusable. That evolved into a conglomeration of common practices to be grouped together into standard tag libraries, and eventually, organized frameworks that incorporate all of these tags. And that's how we've evolved into things like
JSF and
Struts, and the custom tag libraries that are associated with them.
Of course, you don't need to drop a hammer like struts or JSF on your problem. Even just using JSTL tags might be helpful.
-Cameron McKenzie
