Hi folks,
I'm currently studying for the web component developer exam. using "Head
First
Servlets and JSP" and I'm a bit confused by the "target" form of
<c:set>( page 446 ). The cause of the confusion is that rather than give
"target" an identifier like "id" in <
jsp:useBean> you appear to have to
give it an object type like you would in Class.forName(). If I've got
that much right then I don't understand how I then get a reference to the
instance of the bean in order to access the property values. What do I do
if I want more than one of these beans in the same scope?
The following code might make this clearer:
In the uncommented section I create an instance of foo.JamesBean using
<jsp:useBean> and give it a reference name "jmlbean" which I can
subsequently use to access the values of the properties. I could, if I
wanted to use another <jsp:useBean> to create a second bean in the same
scope with a different name and refer to them separately.
In the commented out section I'd like to do exactly the same
thing using <c:set> but I don't have the equivalent of the <jsp:useBean>
"id" attribute.
<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>
<html>
<body>
Use jsp:UseBean to create a bean in page scope and print its contents...
<br>
<br>
<jsp:useBean id="jmlbean" class="foo.JamesBean" scope="page">
<jsp:setProperty name="jmlbean" property="dayName" value="Monday"/>
<jsp:setProperty name="jmlbean" property="monthName" value="May"/>
<jsp:setProperty name="jmlbean" property="bankHoliday" value="true"/>
</jsp:useBean>
<br>
<br>
Print using EL...
<br>
Day is : ${jmlbean.dayName}<br>
Month is : ${jmlbean.monthName}<br>
Bank Holiday is : ${jmlbean.bankHoliday}<br>
<br>
Print using jsp:getProperty...
<br>
Day is : <jsp:getProperty name="jmlbean" property="dayName"/><br>
Month is : <jsp:getProperty name="jmlbean" property="monthName"/><br>
BH is : <jsp:getProperty name="jmlbean" property="bankHoliday"/><br>
<%--
Even if I create a bean "jmlbean2" with <jsp:useBean> how
would I tell <c:set> to use that bean since I can't
give it an "id"?
<c:set value="Friday" target="${???}" property="dayName"/>
<c:set value="December" target="${???}" property="monthName"/>
<c:set value="false" target="${???}" property="bankHoliday"/>
Print the bean properties:<br>
Day Name : <c:out value="${???.dayName}"/>
Month Name : <c:out value="${???.monthName}"/>
BH : <c:out value="${???.bankHoliday}"/>
--%>
</body>
</html>
Perhaps I've just missed the point of this tag. I have no problems
getting the "var" version of <c:set> to work and judging by the fact
that most of the online tutorials and documentation focus on the
"var" version maybe the "target" version is not widely used. I
appreciate that JSP should be presenting data rather than creating
it; however since it's on the exam I'd like to understand it.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
James.
