Problem with JSTL 1.0.6 in WLS 8.1.4 - Please Help

Question

I am trying to use JSTL 1.0.6 in WLS 8.1.4. Here are the steps I followed:
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          Step 1:
          Copied the following jar files to WEB-INF/lib directory:<br>
          - jaxen-full.jar<br>
          - jdbc2_0-stdext.jar<br>
          - jstl.jar<br>
          - saxpath.jar<br>
          - standard.jar<br>
          - xalan.jar<br>
          - xercesImpl.jar<br>
          - xml-apis.jar<br>
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          Step 2:
          Imported JSTL into my one-and-only JSP page as follows:<br>
          <%@ page contentType="text/html;charset=UTF-8" language="java" %>
          <%@ taglib prefix="c"<br>uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/core" %>
          <%@ taglib prefix="c_rt" uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/core_rt" %>
          <%@ taglib prefix="x" uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/xml"%>
          <%@ taglib prefix="x_rt" uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/xml_rt" %>
          <%@ taglib prefix="fmt" uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/fmt" %>
          <%@ taglib prefix="fmt_rt" uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/fmt_rt" %>
          <%@ taglib prefix="sql" uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/sql" %>
          <%@ taglib prefix="sql_rt" uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/sql_rt" %>
          <br><%@ taglib uri="/WEB-INF/struts-bean.tld" prefix="bean" %>
          <%@ taglib uri="/WEB-INF/struts-html.tld" prefix="html" %>
          <br>
          <br>
          (I am also using struts, hence the last two page directives)
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          <br>
          Step 3:
          Finally I tried to build an EAR (which used to build OK before I added JSTL) using a slightly modified version of the build.xml that comes with the Medrec tutorial. wlcompile went OK, but <b>wlappc</b> failed with the following message:
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          java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/servlet/jsp/el/VariableResolver
          <br>
          <br>
          What am I doing wrong? I followed the instructions given in the JSTL 1.0.6 package. Is wlappc not the right tool for translating/compiling the JSP?
          <br>
          Please help!
          <br>
          <br>
          Regards,
          Nadeem

Answer 1

I can't be sure about exactly what's happening here, but I can point out several things.
          The class "javax.servlet.jsp.el.VariableResolver" is associated with JSTL 1.1.x, and JSP 2.0. It's not part of JSTL 1.0.x. Make sure you really have version 1.0.6, and don't have 1.1 somewhere.
          If you're just trying to use the JSTL, you shouldn't need several of those jars that you're presently including. You only need jstl.jar and standard.jar.
          Why are you using the "rt" versions of these taglibs? Those don't even use the expression language. I would remove "_rt" from all of those references.
          Note that if you're using Struts and the JSTL, you probably want to use Struts-EL, which is a version of the Struts jar that uses the EL to evaluate attribute values. Check the struts-user archive for some information about this. You'll find the struts-el distribution in the "contrib" directory of the Struts distribution.