Best practice for comparing values in a JSP

[Balaji Krishnan]

Hi,

I have to check if a specific attribute(variable) of the bean class to some constants in a JSP file. So i am using mulitple if and else-if conditions blocks to display a label accordingly. Instead of having multiple if-else blocks, i am looking for other options to perform this operation effectively in JSP. Below is one approach which i have found so far,

1) Create long array constant with all the values.

private static final long SPEC_TYPES = {100,200,300};

2) In JSP, convert this array to an ArrayList using Arrays.asList(Test.SPEC_TYPES)

ArrayList typesList = new ArrayList(Arrays.asList(Test.SPEC_TYPES));

3) In JSP, get the attribute from the java bean and check if ArrayList contains it.

SampleBean sb = (SampleBean)request.getAttribute("SamBean");
if(typesList .contains(sb.getType()))

Please suggest if the above approach if good or bad. Also please clarify if i can proceed with the if-else conditional block method or any other good practice. Thanks.

[Seetharaman Venkatasamy]

before reaching jsp do all this condition check and set a flag to request scope in *servlet* , and in jsp display the content depends on request flag using JSTL if tag (or appropriate tags)

[Balaji Krishnan]

Hi,

What if i have to do this check for more than one object, then in that case few may have the type available in the array and few may not have it. In such case a single flag can't help.

Thanks!

[Bear Bibeault]

Use the Map, Luke!

[Balaji Krishnan]

Thanks for the suggestion Bear. Does map is a costly operation for this logic?

[Paul Clapham]

Searching a Map via its key is an O(1) operation. Searching a List is O(N) if you use the naive search method and O(log N) if you use binary search.

[Bear Bibeault]

Why are you worrying about performance at this stage and at this level? Please look up premature optimization. Choose what makes the most sense, not what you think might be most performant.

Optimization can be performed later, if and only if, a performance problem becomes evident.

[Balaji Krishnan]

Thanks Paul and Bear for the clarification. I will go with Map.