JSTL paging help required

[Vic Hood]

Hi Folks,
Im a newbie to web programming and programming in general . I written a web application that requires me to paginate my result set .
Ive implemented this pagination using jstl avoiding the usage of any custom tags.
Ive placed my jsp used to generate pagination in the code below.

<c:set var="totalCount" scope="request" value="${totalCount}"/>//Total rows to being set here from Db through request 
<c:set var="perPage" scope="session" value="7"/>//  Records to be displayed per page 
...
...
	<c:forEach
    var="boundaryStart"     begin="0"
    end="${totalCount-1}"
    step="${perPage}" > 
     <a href="?start=<c:out value="${boundaryStart}"/>">
      [
        <c:out value="${(boundaryStart/perPage)+1}"/> // Point A
        
      ]
    </a>
    <c:set var="boundaryval" value="${boundaryStart}"/>
          </c:forEach>
		  // This code helps me generate links to my pages in  the form 1,2 ,3 etc..
	  
	

The problems that I face currently are --
1. The value generated at point A is automatically typecasted to a floating value and hence the page links are displayed as 1.0,2.0,3.0 etc. I would like to display 1,2,3 instead , anyway I could work around to get that??
2.Secondly , I want to generate links for next page and previous page . But for this , I require the to be available outside the loop for each iteration so that I can use it to calculate my next page and previous page with respect to the current page. Or it would be great if anyone could suggest a method where I could display the next and previous links in the same c:forEach loop but only once rather than for each page
something like <Next>[1] [2]..<Last>
Rather than <Next>[1]<Last><Next>[2]<Last>..

Thanks in Advance.

[Paul Clapham]

There's a <fmt:formatNumber> tag in the JSTL which looks like it's what you need.

Also for your second question, the <c:forEach> tag has a "varStatus" attribute which I believe allows you to check, inside the loop, whether it's the first or last iteration.

[Vic Hood]

Hi Paul,
Thanks for your reply.
Your first suggestion worked like a breeze ,Thanks!
However , Im facing an issue with the next and previous links,here's how I approach it now.

	<c:forEach varStatus="status"
    var="boundaryStart"     begin="0"
    end="${totalCount-1}"
    step="${perPage}" > 
    <fmt:formatNumber var="pageNum" value="${(boundaryStart/perPage)+1}" scope="request" maxFractionDigits="0"/>
    <c:out value="${pageNum}" />
    
    <c:if test="${status.first}">
    <a href="?start=<c:out value="${(pageNum-2)*perPage}"/>">
    Previous    // To generate the previous page with respect to current page
    </a>
    </c:if>
     <a href="?start=<c:out value="${boundaryStart}"/>">
      [
       
		 <fmt:formatNumber value="${(boundaryStart/perPage)+1}" maxFractionDigits="0" />    
      ]
    </a>
 
 <c:if test="${status.last}">
    <a href="?start=<c:out value="${(pageNum*perPage)}"/>">// To generate the next page with respect to current page.
 Next   
    </a>
    </c:if>
    </c:forEach>

But when I try this code the 'Previous ' link always points to a value of -pageNum and the 'Next' Link always points to the page beyond the last page . I guess the catch is in finding out how to print 'Next' and 'Previous' only once but take values for the generation of these links dynamically for each iteration.
Can anyone help me with that?
Thanks in advance.
EDIT : it looks like - Previous(Always point s to -pageSize) 1,2,3..,Next(Always points to page after last)

[Vic Hood]

Hi All ,
I figured a workaround myself.
Retrieved the value from the URL to make things easier