Bean not working in jsp

Question

OK, maybe I'm oversharing, but I want to be thorough. Note I asked this question a different way using very different code.
Here's my jsp file - myq.jsp
<%@ page language="java" import="java.util.*,com.serco.inquire.*" %>
<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>
<%@ taglib prefix="inq" tagdir="/WEB-INF/tags" %>
<inq:displayCollection>
<jsp:attribute name="mgr">Chris Novish</jsp:attribute>
</inq:displayCollection>Here's displayCollection.tag used by that jsp:
<%@ tag body-content="scriptless" import="com.serco.inquire.*" %>
<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>
<%@ attribute name="mgr" required="true" %>
<jsp:useBean id="irc" scope="session" class="com.serco.inquire.IrCollection">
  <jsp:setProperty name="irc" property="mgrid" value="${mgr}" />
</jsp:useBean>
${irc.size} | ${irc.mgrid}Here's the java class IrCollection (used as a bean in the tag):
package com.serco.inquire;
import java.sql.*;
import java.util.*;
public class IrCollection {
     public ArrayList iRecords = new ArrayList<InquireRecord>();
     public int size;
     public String mgrid;
     public irCollection() {
          super();
     public void populateCollection() {
          try {
               Class.forName("sun.jdbc.odbc.JdbcOdbcDriver");
               String filename = "inquire.mdb";
               String database = "jdbc:odbc:Driver={Microsof Access Driver (*.mdb)};DBQ=";
               database+= filename.trim() + ";DriverID=22;READONLY=true}";
               Connection con = DriverManager.getConnection( database ,"","");
               Statement s = con.createStatement();
               s.execute ("SELECT * FROM inquiries WHERE manager = '" + this.mgrid + "'");
               ResultSet rs = s.getResultSet();
               int cur;
               while (rs.next()) {
                    cur = rs.getRow()-1;
                    InquireRecord localIR = new InquireRecord();
                    int curID = rs.getInt("ID");
                    localIR.setID(curID);
                    String cursub = rs.getString("submitter");
                    localIR.setSubmitter(cursub);
                    this.iRecords.add(cur, localIR);
               con.close();
               this.size = iRecords.size();
          catch (Throwable e) {
               System.out.println(e);
     public int getSize () {
          return this.size;
     public void setMgrid(String datum) {
          this.mgrid = datum;
          this.populateCollection();
     public String getMgrid() {
          return this.mgrid;
}and here's the InquireRecord java class used by IrCollection:
package com.serco.inquire;
public class InquireRecord {
     private int ID;
     private String submitter;
     public InquireRecord() {
          super();
     public InquireRecord(String asubmitter) {
          this.submitter = asubmitter;
     public int getID(){
          return this.ID;
     public void setID(int datum) {
          this.ID = datum;
     public String getSubmitter() {
          return this.submitter;
     public void setSubmitter(String datum) {
          this.submitter = datum;
}The JSP does this: set the mgr variable, which is passes to the tag, the tag then creates an instance of IrCollection using that mgr variable. (Yes, putting that populateCollection() method call in the setMgrid() method is probably Bad Practice, but it works, usually). The IrCollection objects builds an ArrayList of InquireCollection objects from an Access database. It then sets it's size property based on how many InquireCollection instances it put into the ArrayList. Once that's all done, the tag spits out 2 things: The size property and the mgrid property.
When I view the JSP, it gives me 0 for the size and Chris Novish for the mgrid.
I think this could be one of the following:
*Not finding any matching records of the database
*Not actually executing the populateCollection() method
*some how forgetting the information it put into that ArrayList?
I"m sure there's another possibility, but I don't know.
Here's what gets me. Here's a test class I made called TestCollection:
{code}package com.serco.inquire;
import java.util.*;
import java.text.*;
public class TestCollection {
     public static void main(String[] args) {
          IrCollection myCollection = new IrCollection();
          myCollection.setMgrid("Chris Novish");
          System.out.println(myCollection.getSize());
          System.out.println(myCollection.getMgrid());
}{code}
if I run that I get a size of 4 and a mgrid of Chris Novish.
Same data in, and it works as expected.
So... why won't JSP do it?

Answer 1

You have defined a session scope for that bean. You have to make sure that the bean is instantiated by this jsp and not earlier. If the bean is located in the session because it was set earlier, then the body tags within useBean are not evaluated.
Look here - http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/tags/syntaxref.fm14.html#8865
An easy way to test it would be to change the scope of the bean to request.
ram.