JSP in custom tag attributes...

Question

Sirs,
          A very nice feature from a development perspective, would be the ability
          to use JSP code within custom tags. Say I have a page on which I wish
          to give all the information on a widget. Say further that I have
          implemented a tag that writes out all the info of a widget as HTML
          table. I would like to write something like this:
          <mytaglib:widgetTag widgetID="<%=request.getParameter("widget_id")%>"
          />
          As far as I know, in the current implementation of custom taglibs this
          does not seem to be possible. Instead you end up writing something like
          this:
          <mytaglib:widgetTag>
          <mytaglib:getWidget><%=request.getParameter("widget_id")%>"</mytaglib:getWidget>
          <mytaglib:displayWidget />
          </mytaglib:widgetTag>
          Which is much more like a scripting language than a heirarchical XML .
          Now, I could always just use the request object within the tag helper
          classes, but this gives up flexibility and can introduce security
          issues, and it also makes the tags much more difficult to work with...
          In short, we should push for JSP evaluation of tag attributes. Weblogic
          could leap ahead of other app servers in this area (making up for the
          custom tag performance issues, to be solve in sp6) and Sun would, once
          again, follow Weblogic's lead and rewrite the standard to include this
          functionality.
          Regards,
          Carson Gross
          

Answer 1

Carson,
          Perhaps the problem is that you are treating custom tags like one would
          construct an imperative language. I have never had to put Java or use beans
          or %= or even parameters to tags into a JSP because of custom tags.
          The real problem is writing/packaging/maintaining all those tags; sure could
          use a tool that did just that ;-)
          Peace,
          Cameron Purdy
          [email protected]
          http://www.tangosol.com
          WebLogic Consulting Available
          "Carson Gross" <[email protected]> wrote in message
          news:[email protected]...
          > Sirs,
          >
          > A very nice feature from a development perspective, would be the ability
          > to use JSP code within custom tags. Say I have a page on which I wish
          > to give all the information on a widget. Say further that I have
          > implemented a tag that writes out all the info of a widget as HTML
          > table. I would like to write something like this:
          >
          > <mytaglib:widgetTag widgetID="<%=request.getParameter("widget_id")%>"
          > />
          >
          > As far as I know, in the current implementation of custom taglibs this
          > does not seem to be possible. Instead you end up writing something like
          > this:
          >
          > <mytaglib:widgetTag>
          >
          >
          <mytaglib:getWidget><%=request.getParameter("widget_id")%>"</mytaglib:getWid
          get>
          >
          > <mytaglib:displayWidget />
          > </mytaglib:widgetTag>
          >
          > Which is much more like a scripting language than a heirarchical XML .
          > Now, I could always just use the request object within the tag helper
          > classes, but this gives up flexibility and can introduce security
          > issues, and it also makes the tags much more difficult to work with...
          >
          > In short, we should push for JSP evaluation of tag attributes. Weblogic
          > could leap ahead of other app servers in this area (making up for the
          > custom tag performance issues, to be solve in sp6) and Sun would, once
          > again, follow Weblogic's lead and rewrite the standard to include this
          > functionality.
          >
          > Regards,
          > Carson Gross
          >