How to use cusom classes in jsp

Question

Dear all,
Would anyone teach me how to import and use my custom classes
in my jsp? I've been unable to import the classes that reside in the same
directory as the jsp file. Some detailed explanation with sample folder structure
will be much appreciated.

Answer 1

Thanks for the response.
First, I've not yet touched Java beans. Don't yet know how to create them.
Hence what I'm trying to do now is write an ordinary Java class and import it into
the jsp via page directive.
After your suggestion, I created the following folder structure in Tomcat5.
webapps/mainalee_jsp/WEB-INF/
WEB-INF/classes
WEB-INF/lib
WEB-INF/web.xml
I've a JSP file, jsp1.jsp in the path: webapps/mainalee_jsp
I've a java class, testclass.class, in the path: webapps/mainalee_jsp/WEB-INF/classes
The codes are as follows:
testclass.java:
package mainalee_jsp;
class testclass {
     int age;
     String name;
public void testclass (int x, String y){
     age =x;     name=y;
public String getName(){
     return name;
public int getAge(){
     return age;
jsp1.jsp:
<%@ page import="mainalee_jsp.*" %>
<%
testclass tc = new testclass(27,"XYZ");
out.println(tc.age);
out.println("<br>");
out.println(tc.name);
%>
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/dtd/web-app_2_3.dtd">
<web-app>
</web-app>
When the jsp is called, Tomcat says that package mainalee_jsp doesn't exist.
How can I make this program work? Thanks for the help to JSP newbie.