any tag for adding objects

[joseph prabhu]

joe here


my code is

<%
  LinkedList<String> li=new LinkedList<String>();
  li.add("joe"); li.add("kumar");
  request.setAttribute("list",li);
%>
${list} 

The above code gives the output;

my question is instead of creating the object for LinkedList and add objects
in it then reqeust.setAttribute("list",li);
is there any tag in jsp for shortcut. we use <jsp:useBean></useBean> for usebean

[Steve Luke]

No, there isn't a tag for that. The reason is this is work that shouldn't really be done in the JSP. The JSP should be about displaying data, not performing logic.

So that functionality should be mover - usually to a controller servlet that gets called before the JSP, but can also be moved into a JavaBean. For example:

//JavaBean
package luke.steve;
public class ListMaker {
  public List<String> getList() {
    List<String> li = new LinkedList<String>();
    li.add("joe"); li.add("kumar");
    return li;
  }
}

 //JSP
<jsp:useBean id="listmaker" class="luke.steve.ListMaker" scope="request"/>
${listmaker.list}

The idea is that your JSP doesn't really do any work. Ideally, you have a controller servlet that decides what data needs to be made available to the JSP, the servlet generates it (or has some other data object generate it) and then makes it available to the JSP.

But, barring a refactoring of your entire code base to MVC, using a dummy JavaBean to do your work increases the separation of the display from the Model, and will make it easier to do that transition later on.