What tag to use to print STRING value from Backing Bean

Question

Hi;
I would like to achieve the objective as below:
Displaying 4 buttons (pagination) in my jsf page:
1) Go First
2) Go Previous
3) Go Forward
4) Go Last
<h:commandButton image="images\first(on).gif" type="submit" action="#{alertSetBean.goFirst}"/>
<h:commandButton image="images\previous(on).gif" type="submit" action="#{alertSetBean.goPrevious}"/>
<h:commandButton image="images\forward(on).gif" type="submit" action="#{alertSetBean.goForward}"/>
<h:commandButton image="images\last(on).gif" type="submit" action="#{alertSetBean.goLast}"/>In order to make sense for user, when the page is displaying first set element records, the icon should be disabled for
-Go First
-Go Previous
and same goes to last set element records, icon to disable for
-Go Forward
-Go Last
To disable, i will substitute
<h:commandButton image="images\forward(on).gif" type="submit" action="#{alertSetBean.goForward}"/>
with
<h:graphicImage value="images\previous(off).gif" />
It looks very messy in jsf page. Therefore, I would like to call a method in Backing Bean, where it will do check pagination by returning the long string as following:
<h:commandButton image="images\first(on).gif" type="submit" action="#{alertSetBean.goFirst}"/>
<h:commandButton image="images\previous(on).gif" type="submit" action="#{alertSetBean.goPrevious}"/>
<h:commandButton image="images\forward(on).gif" type="submit" action="#{alertSetBean.goForward}"/>
<h:commandButton image="images\last(on).gif" type="submit" action="#{alertSetBean.goLast}"/>Unfortunately, i'm using
<h:outputLabel
<h:outputText
The JSF page DOES NOT render the code, and it print the string instead. Please, I need advise.
Thanks;
Yoke Yew

Answer 1

Hi Balu;
Before i received your great response, i was in the midst debugging
Servlet.service() for servlet jsp threw exception
org.apache.jasper.JasperException: The absolute uri: http://java.sun.com/jstl/core cannot be resolved in either web.xml or the jar files deployed with this application
with my following JSTL code
<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/core" prefix="c"%>
<tr>
       <td align="right">            
            </f:verbatim>
            <h:outputLabel value="#{alertSetBean.totalCnt}" styleClass="lbl"></h:outputLabel>
            <h:outputLabel value="  Total  " styleClass="lbl"></h:outputLabel>
          <c:if test="${alertSetBean.pagination == 1}">
               <h:graphicImage value="images\first(off).gif"/>
            <h:graphicImage value="images\previous(off).gif" />
            <h:commandButton image="images\forward(on).gif" type="submit" action="#{alertSetBean.goForward}"/>
            <h:commandButton image="images\last(on).gif" type="submit" action="#{alertSetBean.goLast}"/>
          </c:if>          
          <c:if test="${alertSetBean.pagination == 2}">
               <h:commandButton image="images\first(on).gif" type="submit" action="#{alertSetBean.goFirst}"/>
            <h:commandButton image="images\previous(on).gif" type="submit" action="#{alertSetBean.goPrevious}"/>
            <h:commandButton image="images\forward(on).gif" type="submit" action="#{alertSetBean.goForward}"/>
            <h:commandButton image="images\last(on).gif" type="submit" action="#{alertSetBean.goLast}"/>
          </c:if>
            <c:if test="${alertSetBean.pagination == 3}">
                 <h:commandButton image="images\first(on).gif" type="submit" action="#{alertSetBean.goFirst}"/>
            <h:commandButton image="images\previous(on).gif" type="submit" action="#{alertSetBean.goPrevious}"/>
            <h:graphicImage value="images\forward(off).gif"/>
            <h:graphicImage value="images\last(off).gif" />
            </c:if>
            <f:verbatim>
       </td>
  </tr>I hope somebody can point where is my mistake, and i will refer to your previous solution suggested. Thanks in advance.