Special Edition Using Java™ Server Pages and Servlets

Chapter 15. JSP Directives

In this chapter

• The page Directive

• The include Directive

• The taglib Directive

The Java Server Pages specification contains four different types of tags that start with <%. The plain <% tag begins a block of Java code. The <%! tag begins a declaration of class attributes or methods. The <%= tag inserts the result of a Java expression in the output. The final <% tag is the directive tag, which is <%@. There are currently three directives in the JSP specification:

• page

• include

• taglib

The page directive is a catchall for various page options that don't really warrant their own directive. The include directive allows you to include other files at compile time as opposed to runtime. The taglib lets you include an external library ...