dynamic list - javax.el.PropertyNotFoundException

I'm getting a javax.el.PropertyNotFoundException when running my code. I'm using Glassfish v2.1. I'm trying to implement a dynamic list using a custom tag. The custom tag is basically the <select> tag with a foreach to iterate through the elements and add them to the list. However, when I pass the Array to the tag via EL and try to retrieve attributes of the individual elements using the "var" attribute of the foreach tag, I get this exception. For some reason, the JVM is considering the "var" attribute to be a String and not an object of the type of the array. Hopefully, someone can explain this because it is making me want to

Here is the exception:
javax.servlet.ServletException: javax.servlet.jsp.JspException: javax.el.PropertyNotFoundException: The class 'java.lang.String' does not have the property 'text'.

Here is the custom tag code:

<%@taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>
<jsp:directive.tag description="dynamic drop-down list" pageEncoding="UTF-8"/>
<jsp:directive.attribute
    description="list options: type=com.cheersandsmears.web.control.interfaces.Option" name="options" required="true" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="selectedOptionText" required="false" rtexprvalue="true" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="selectedOptionIndex" required="false" rtexprvalue="true" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="selectedOptionValue" required="false" rtexprvalue="true" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="disabled" description="Set text \"disabled\" if the drop-down list should be disabled." required="false" rtexprvalue="true" />
<select ${disabled}>
    <c:forEach items="${options}" var="option" varStatus="x">
        <c:choose>
            <c:when test="${option.text == selectedOptionText || option.value == selctedOptionValue || x.count == selectedOptionIndex}">
                <c:set var="selected" value="selected"/>
            </c:when>
            <c:otherwise>
                <c:set var="selected" value=""/>
            </c:otherwise>
        </c:choose>
        <option value="${option.value}" ${selected}>${option.text}</option>
    </c:forEach>
</select>

Here is the JSP code which uses this tag:

Now if I implement the same code used in the custom tag in the JSP and do not call the custom tag "dropDownList," I have no problems.

Here's an example of code that works without exception:

Thanks in advance for the help.

I think you will have to add rtexpvalue="true" for the attribute "options" as it is by default is false. Not sure but I guess what happened is that he converted the array to string by calling toString and then passed the result value to the custom tag.

Thank you for the help. I have found that it works fine when I add a type attribute to the "options" attribute in the custom tag.
Here is the code:

<%@taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>
<jsp:directive.tag description="Drop-down combo list" pageEncoding="UTF-8"/>
<jsp:directive.attribute name="options" required="true" rtexprvalue="true"
                         type="com.cheersandsmears.web.control.interfaces.Option[]"
                         description="list options: type=com.cheersandsmears.web.control.interfaces.Option" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="selectedOptionText" required="false" rtexprvalue="true" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="selectedOptionIndex" required="false" rtexprvalue="true" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="selectedOptionValue" required="false" rtexprvalue="true" />
<jsp:directive.attribute name="disabled" description="Set text \"disabled\" if the drop-down list should be disabled." required="false" rtexprvalue="true" />
<select ${disabled}>
    <c:forEach items="${options}" var="option" varStatus="x">
        <c:choose>
            <c:when test="${option.text == selectedOptionText || option.value == selctedOptionValue || x.count == selectedOptionIndex}">
                <c:set var="selected" value="selected"/>
            </c:when>
            <c:otherwise>
                <c:set var="selected" value=""/>
            </c:otherwise>
        </c:choose>
        <option value="${option.value}" ${selected}>${option.text}</option>
    </c:forEach>
</select>

It also works when i declare the type to be java.lang.Object[]. I did, however, add the "rtexprvalue" attribute to the "options" attribute declaration but I found that it worked without this.

Now my question is, why is the type attribute necessary in the custom tag code? There must be some basic principle of EL that I don't understand.

I am sorry for my earlier reply. I checked the JSP specs and I found that in case of tag files rtexprvalue defaults to true unlike the corresponding TLD element.
Also I have found that type defaults to java.lang.String if not specified which causes the above error.

Okay. Thank you for your help. I no longer want to

which is a very good thing!