How to install custom taglibs?

Question

This is driving me crazy. I'm building a JSP application and I'm trying to use the custom tag libraries jstl.jar and standard.jar. I've installed Tomcat vesrion 4 vesrion 27. I can make a reference to the sql.tld, but whenever I add something like <sql:query...etc />, I get the error "Unabled to load class" or "java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/servlet/jsp/JspContext
When I put jstl.jar and standard.jar in the WEB-INF\lib directory, Tomcat starts up with a lot of errors("Document is invalid no grammar found").
I've tried everything, read documentation but I still cannot figure it out.
+++++The taglib directive in my jsp looks like this:
<%@taglib prefix="sql" uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/sql"%>
++++The header in my taglib looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<!DOCTYPE taglib
PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD JSP Tag Library 1.2//EN"
"http://java.sun.com/dtd/web-jsptaglibrary_1_2.dtd">
<taglib>
<tlib-version>1.0</tlib-version>
<jsp-version>1.2</jsp-version>
<short-name>sql</short-name>
<uri>http://java.sun.com/jstl/sql</uri>
<display-name>JSTL sql</display-name>
<description>JSTL 1.0 sql library</description>
+++++and my web.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE web-app
PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.3//EN"
"http://java.sun.com/j2ee/dtds/web-app_2_3.dtd">
<web-app>
<taglib>
<taglib-uri>http://java.sun.com/jstl/sql</taglib-uri>
<taglib-location>/WEB-INF/sql.tld</taglib-location>
</taglib>
</web-app>
Do I explicitly have to set the classpath? Where do I have to put the standard.jar and the jstl.jar?
Thanx for your help.
Frits

Answer 1

The JSTL JARs should go in your app's WEB-INF/lib. The JARs in that directory are added to the CLASSPATH by Tomcat. That's the proper place for them. No need to edit any CLASSPATH settings. Tomcat ignores any system CLASSPATH that you might have. (I recommend that people delete that environment variable altogether. It does nothing useful that I know of.)
You should not need to put any <taglib> in your web.xml. The URI that you should use to refer to the taglib is the one inside the .tld file packed in standard.jar. So your JSPs should have lines like this at the top:
<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/core" %>The URI must match the value inside the c.tld:
  <uri>http://java.sun.com/jstl/core</uri>If you do this, Tomcat should be able to find your taglib classes. - MOD