EL HTTP 500 status error

Hello, I'm a newbie to JSP's and I need help with the use of the EL. Whenever I try to use EL in my JSP's the "HTTP Status 500 error" appears. Is there something I'm doing wrong within the JSP itself? Is there a way I can resolve this problem?

thanks for taking the time

All server errors are 500 errors. That's not enough info to even begin to guess what the issue might be. Please include more detail.

Some pre-emptive guessing: if you are using it in conjunction with the JSTL, have you installed the JSTL correctly? Witht he right version? Have you declared your web.xml correctly?

Read the JSP FAQs on these subjects for details...

In my web-app, I have a regular DD, an html form, and a JSP.
Whenever I use the standard actions <jsp:useBean ../> and <jsp:getProperty ../>, my app works fine. But as soon as I use EL, that's when the error occurs.

Here's the details of my web-app:
(1) I'm using Tomcat 5
(2) the .html file that i'm using:
<html><body>
<form action="TB3.jsp">
<center>
Name: <input type="text" name="name"><br><br>
ID#: <input type="text" name="empID"><br> <br>
First Food: <input type="text" name="food"><br><br>
Second Food: <input type="text" name="food"><br><br>
<input type="submit">
</center></form></body></html>
(3)TB3.jsp:
<html><body>
Request param name is: ${param.name} <br>
Request param empID is: ${param.empID} <br>
Request param food is: ${param.food} <br>
First food request param: ${paramValues.food[0]} <br>
Second food request param: ${paramValues.food[1]} <br>
Request param name: ${paramValues.name[0]}
</body></html>
(4)The DD in which the servlet is not used:
<web-app ...>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>Ch 8</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>com.example.PersonServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>Ch 8</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/UserChoice.do</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

Is there something i'm doing wrong when i deploy this?

thanks for taking the time

If other JSPs are working, I would say it is an issue with your specific JSP page rather than any configuration.

Are there any error messages apart from "HTTP Status 500".
An error message and stack trace would be useful.
Also check the log files or console for any error messages.

<web-app ...>

You removed the most interesting part.

It's definitely somthing in your setup. I dropped your files, as-is, into one of my web apps and they worked perfectly.

Hi mark

have you got the solution for your problem?

I am facing the same problem

could you guide me

Thanks
[ February 16, 2006: Message edited by: manogna edintipal ]

In order to use EL in a jsp, do you have to configure it in DD?

No, you just need to configure the web.xml properly as a servlets 2.4 application. But since you don't seem to want to show us that, not much to be done at this point.

You was right, there was something wrong with my tomcat setup. Therefore, I started over completely. I reinstalled Tomcat, reset my environment variables, and i placed a copy of the servlet.jar in my jre/ext folder and everything is working fine.

thanks for taking the time.