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  • How to create a custom Function for JSTL

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    JSTL Custom Function : In this article I am going to teach you how to create custom JSTL function. We had used many JSTL functions which are already in the lib.But if you want to create a custom function for JSTL you need to follow some easy steps.

    Step 1: Create tag library descriptor file which defines the configuration of custom function, like it's class and the function which is open to use. Create the .tld file inside the 'WEB-INF/tld/ ' directory .

    /WEB-INF/tld/customTagLibrary.tld

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
    <taglib version="2.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" 
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee web-jsptaglibrary_2_0.xsd">
    
        <display-name>Custom EL Functions</display-name>    
        <tlib-version>1.0</tlib-version>
        <short-name>cg</short-name>
        <uri>/WEB-INF/tld/customTagLibrary</uri>
    
        <function>
            <name>getSum</name>
            <function-class>com.evon.example.CustomELFunction</function-class>
            <function-signature>
                String getSum(int, int)
            </function-signature>
        </function> 
    </taglib>
    

    Step 2 : Create an entry in web.xml for this tld file information:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd" id="WebApp_ID" version="3.0">
    
      <jsp-config>
          <taglib>
              <taglib-uri>/WEB-INF/tld/customTagLibrary</taglib-uri>
              <taglib-location>/WEB-INF/tld/customTagLibrary.tld</taglib-location>
          </taglib>
      </jsp-config>
    </web-app>
    

    Step 3 : Create a class file which should match as described in function-class tag in tld file. Note: Method signature must include static identifier.

    CustomELFunction.java

    package com.evon.example;
    public class CustomELFunction {
        public static String getSum(int x, int y){
            int sum = x+y;
            return sum;
        }
    }
    

    Step 4 : Finally we need to create a jsp file, where were going to call custom function using jstl. First we need to define the object of that taglib using jsp directives <%@ taglib %>. Following the jsp which calling a custom JSTL method using Expression Language.

    <%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%>
    <%@ taglib uri="/WEB-INF/tld/customTagLibrary" prefix="cg" %>
    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
    <html>
    <head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
    <title>Custom Function </title>
    </head>
    <body>
    ${cg:getSum(25+30) }
    </body>
    </html>
    

 2 Comment(s)

  • Can I add many functions to my library ? I mean, do I need to follow these steps every time I create a new Function ? I would like to do this for example:

      <function>
        <name>newFunction</name>
        <function-class>NewClass.newFunction</function-class>
        <function-signature>newFunction(String str)</function-signature>
    </function>
    
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