JSTL: Using value of a variable in expression

Question

All, I am stuck on this problem and I hope someone here can help. This is a real tough one for me to explain but I'l try my best.
I am try to have my includes a little more component oriented. So I wanted to use something like the following
<c:import url="/somedir/outputusers.jsp">
<c:param name="collection">users</c:param>
</c:import>
I would like to use the value of a request parameter in a JSTL expression. For example, say I have a Collection of objects implementing the User interface in the request under the name 'users'. Normally in JSTL I can reference it by ${users}. Now say I wrote a JSP page that will display any collection of objects that implement "User". I would like to use something like above to pass in the name of the variable in request scope, that points to the collection of User objects, i.e. "users". Then in the included jsp I would use JSTL to loop through the collection and output it in HTML.
The problem is I cannot find any want of doing it. It would probably look something like this:
<c:forEach var="user" items="${ ${param.collection} }">
Any ideas?
Steve

Answer 1

In the worst case, you could always resort to using scriptlets to retrieve the parameter. and set it up as an attribute in the local page scope.
<%
String param = (String)request.getParameter("collection");
Collection userCollection = (Collection)request.getAttribute(param);
pageContext.setAttribute("local_collection", userCollection);
%>
<forEach var="user" items="${local_collection}">
,,,I think this should work.
JSTL is great, but it can't yet replace every scriptlet, much as I would like it to.