Strange error - Bean not found in scope

[Sudharsan Govindarajan]

Hey!
The JSP spec (and my common sense) says that if a bean is not found, it will be instantiated. But when i try to use a bean using the <jsp:useBean> tag it reports the following error

org.apache.jasper.JasperException: bean phoneBook not found within scope
at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:246)
at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServlet.java:289)
at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:240)
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:853)

(truncated the long stack trace)
The bean phoneBook, which is referred does have a public no argument constructor.
The class exists in the \WEB-INF\classes\ folder. Other classes in the same package have no problem in instantiation.
The servlet container is Tomcat 4.1.18.
Whats wrong?
thanks
sudharsan

[Jason Menard]

It might help if we could see the JSP code. One reason you might get something like this is if you did a usebean for "PhoneBook" and then later referenced it as "phoneBook".

[Marty Hall]

...But when i try to use a bean using the <jsp:useBean> tag it reports the following error...

Are you sure that it is the jsp:useBean tag that causes the error? Maybe it is a jsp:getProperty or jsp:setProperty tag? Maybe put in some
<% System.out.println("..."); %>
statements to be sure?
Cheers-
- Marty

[Sudharsan Govindarajan]

Marty,
Just a single line of JSP code was enough to reproduce this error. I tested with a jsp file containing only this line

<jsp:useBean id="phoneBook" class="com.xxx.web.PhoneBook" />

And I'm sure abt the spelling of the id value.
-sudharsan