How to get the ServletContext when writing a class

Question

Morning,
I've got a project using al least 4 jsp documents that try to manipulate a mysql database
To access the database and get a connection, i've put this syntax at the start of each document
<%! Connection con; %>
<%     
String url =  (String)application.getInitParameter("databaseUrl");
               String username = application.getInitParameter("username");
               String password = application.getInitParameter("password");
               Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver").newInstance();
           con = DriverManager.getConnection(url, username, password);
               %>Those documents also use classes that I create, what I want to do is keep the code I've written above in one place instead of 4 different places, Is there a way I can use the application variable, which belongs to ServletContext in a class (not a servlet)
Message was edited by:
Octavian

Answer 1

This syntax reference JSP 2.0 : http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/syntax/2.0/syntaxref20.html
covers JSP actions such as jsp:useBean , jsp:getProperty and jsp:setProperty.
The API for JSTL is pretty intuitive:
http://java.sun.com/products/jsp/jstl/1.1/docs/tlddocs/index.html
But if you need more details on a particular JSTL tag you can refer to the JSTL 1.1 Specification - it's a PDF document.
JSTL also uses EL (Expression Language) which is also covered by the JSTL specification and by the above JSP 2.0 syntax reference.
There are many JSTL tutorials and articles too, but most of them are old so they contain JSTL 1.0 code.
To get yourself started you need jstl.jar and standard.jar which come with the latest JSTL 1.1 distribution found here:
http://jakarta.apache.org/taglibs/doc/standard-doc/intro.html
Standard-1.1 (JSTL 1.1) requires a JSP container that supports the Java Servlet 2.4 and JavaServer Pages 2.0 specifications. Jakarta Tomcat 5 supports the new specifications. The Standard-1.1 taglib has been tested with Tomcat 5.0.3.
After you have set up your environment you can test it with a small sample of JSTL code like this:
inside sample.jsp
<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>
<c:set var="someVariable" value="Hello World!"/>
<c:out value="${someVariable}/>
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