Jsp – Include another JSP file

jsp

I am currently trying to learn JSP. My question is, at present I used to include the header and footer of the page using:

<%@include file="includes/header.jsp" %>

and

<%@include file="includes/footer.jsp" %>

But now, I have separated the page content also. So, if user clicks on a page, say products, it has to load the JSP file which is situated in: includes/pages/products.jsp
So, the link to the user is like: <a href="index.jsp?p=products">Products</a>.

So, I have to get the p value and display the page based on it.

Following is what I have done so far.

<%
 if(request.getParameter("p")!=null)
 { 
   String p = request.getParameter("p");
%>    

<%@include file="includes/page_name.jsp" %>

<% 
 }
%>

So, how do I place the value of variable "p" in position of "page_name" ?

Or, is there any other method that I could use ?

In PHP, we could use the include() or include_once(). I am bit stuck in this JSP. 🙁

Best Answer

What you're doing is a static include. A static include is resolved at compile time, and may thus not use a parameter value, which is only known at execution time.

What you need is a dynamic include:

<jsp:include page="..." />

Note that you should use the JSP EL rather than scriptlets. It also seems that you're implementing a central controller with index.jsp. You should use a servlet to do that instead, and dispatch to the appropriate JSP from this servlet. Or better, use an existing MVC framework like Stripes or Spring MVC.

Related Solutions

Java – JSP tricks to make templating easier

As skaffman suggested, JSP 2.0 Tag Files are the bee's knees.

Let's take your simple example.

Put the following in WEB-INF/tags/wrapper.tag

<%@tag description="Simple Wrapper Tag" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<html><body>
  <jsp:doBody/>
</body></html>

Now in your example.jsp page:

<%@page contentType="text/html" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<%@taglib prefix="t" tagdir="/WEB-INF/tags" %>

<t:wrapper>
    <h1>Welcome</h1>
</t:wrapper>

That does exactly what you think it does.

So, lets expand upon that to something a bit more general. WEB-INF/tags/genericpage.tag

<%@tag description="Overall Page template" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<%@attribute name="header" fragment="true" %>
<%@attribute name="footer" fragment="true" %>
<html>
  <body>
    <div id="pageheader">
      <jsp:invoke fragment="header"/>
    </div>
    <div id="body">
      <jsp:doBody/>
    </div>
    <div id="pagefooter">
      <jsp:invoke fragment="footer"/>
    </div>
  </body>
</html>

To use this:

<%@page contentType="text/html" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<%@taglib prefix="t" tagdir="/WEB-INF/tags" %>

<t:genericpage>
    <jsp:attribute name="header">
      <h1>Welcome</h1>
    </jsp:attribute>
    <jsp:attribute name="footer">
      <p id="copyright">Copyright 1927, Future Bits When There Be Bits Inc.</p>
    </jsp:attribute>
    <jsp:body>
        <p>Hi I'm the heart of the message</p>
    </jsp:body>
</t:genericpage>

What does that buy you? A lot really, but it gets even better...

WEB-INF/tags/userpage.tag

<%@tag description="User Page template" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<%@taglib prefix="t" tagdir="/WEB-INF/tags" %>
<%@attribute name="userName" required="true"%>

<t:genericpage>
    <jsp:attribute name="header">
      <h1>Welcome ${userName}</h1>
    </jsp:attribute>
    <jsp:attribute name="footer">
      <p id="copyright">Copyright 1927, Future Bits When There Be Bits Inc.</p>
    </jsp:attribute>
    <jsp:body>
        <jsp:doBody/>
    </jsp:body>
</t:genericpage>

To use this: (assume we have a user variable in the request)

<%@page contentType="text/html" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<%@taglib prefix="t" tagdir="/WEB-INF/tags" %>

<t:userpage userName="${user.fullName}">
  <p>
    First Name: ${user.firstName} <br/>
    Last Name: ${user.lastName} <br/>
    Phone: ${user.phone}<br/>
  </p>
</t:userpage>

But it turns you like to use that user detail block in other places. So, we'll refactor it. WEB-INF/tags/userdetail.tag

<%@tag description="User Page template" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<%@tag import="com.example.User" %>
<%@attribute name="user" required="true" type="com.example.User"%>

First Name: ${user.firstName} <br/>
Last Name: ${user.lastName} <br/>
Phone: ${user.phone}<br/>

Now the previous example becomes:

<%@page contentType="text/html" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<%@taglib prefix="t" tagdir="/WEB-INF/tags" %>

<t:userpage userName="${user.fullName}">
  <p>
    <t:userdetail user="${user}"/>
  </p>
</t:userpage>

The beauty of JSP Tag files is that it lets you basically tag generic markup and then refactor it to your heart's content.

JSP Tag Files have pretty much usurped things like Tiles etc., at least for me. I find them much easier to use as the only structure is what you give it, nothing preconceived. Plus you can use JSP tag files for other things (like the user detail fragment above).

Here's an example that is similar to DisplayTag that I've done, but this is all done with Tag Files (and the Stripes framework, that's the s: tags..). This results in a table of rows, alternating colors, page navigation, etc:

<t:table items="${actionBean.customerList}" var="obj" css_class="display">
  <t:col css_class="checkboxcol">
    <s:checkbox name="customerIds" value="${obj.customerId}"
                onclick="handleCheckboxRangeSelection(this, event);"/>
  </t:col>
  <t:col name="customerId" title="ID"/>
  <t:col name="firstName" title="First Name"/>
  <t:col name="lastName" title="Last Name"/>
  <t:col>
    <s:link href="/Customer.action" event="preEdit">
      Edit
      <s:param name="customer.customerId" value="${obj.customerId}"/>
      <s:param name="page" value="${actionBean.page}"/>
    </s:link>
  </t:col>
</t:table>

Of course the tags work with the JSTL tags (like c:if, etc.). The only thing you can't do within the body of a tag file tag is add Java scriptlet code, but this isn't as much of a limitation as you might think. If I need scriptlet stuff, I just put the logic in to a tag and drop the tag in. Easy.

So, tag files can be pretty much whatever you want them to be. At the most basic level, it's simple cut and paste refactoring. Grab a chunk of layout, cut it out, do some simple parameterization, and replace it with a tag invocation.

At a higher level, you can do sophisticated things like this table tag I have here.

Java – the difference between JSF, Servlet and JSP

JSP (JavaServer Pages)

JSP is a Java view technology running on the server machine which allows you to write template text in client side languages (like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, ect.). JSP supports taglibs, which are backed by pieces of Java code that let you control the page flow or output dynamically. A well-known taglib is JSTL. JSP also supports Expression Language, which can be used to access backend data (via attributes available in the page, request, session and application scopes), mostly in combination with taglibs.

When a JSP is requested for the first time or when the web app starts up, the servlet container will compile it into a class extending HttpServlet and use it during the web app's lifetime. You can find the generated source code in the server's work directory. In for example Tomcat, it's the /work directory. On a JSP request, the servlet container will execute the compiled JSP class and send the generated output (usually just HTML/CSS/JS) through the web server over a network to the client side, which in turn displays it in the web browser.

Servlets

Servlet is a Java application programming interface (API) running on the server machine, which intercepts requests made by the client and generates/sends a response. A well-known example is the HttpServlet which provides methods to hook on HTTP requests using the popular HTTP methods such as GET and POST. You can configure HttpServlets to listen to a certain HTTP URL pattern, which is configurable in web.xml, or more recently with Java EE 6, with @WebServlet annotation.

When a Servlet is first requested or during web app startup, the servlet container will create an instance of it and keep it in memory during the web app's lifetime. The same instance will be reused for every incoming request whose URL matches the servlet's URL pattern. You can access the request data by HttpServletRequest and handle the response by HttpServletResponse. Both objects are available as method arguments inside any of the overridden methods of HttpServlet, such as doGet() and doPost().

JSF (JavaServer Faces)

JSF is a component based MVC framework which is built on top of the Servlet API and provides components via taglibs which can be used in JSP or any other Java based view technology such as Facelets. Facelets is much more suited to JSF than JSP. It namely provides great templating capabilities such as composite components, while JSP basically only offers the <jsp:include> for templating in JSF, so that you're forced to create custom components with raw Java code (which is a bit opaque and a lot of tedious work) when you want to replace a repeated group of components with a single component. Since JSF 2.0, JSP has been deprecated as view technology in favor of Facelets.

Note: JSP itself is NOT deprecated, just the combination of JSF with JSP is deprecated.

Note: JSP has great templating abilities by means of Taglibs, especially the (Tag File) variant. JSP templating in combination with JSF is what is lacking.

As being a MVC (Model-View-Controller) framework, JSF provides the FacesServlet as the sole request-response Controller. It takes all the standard and tedious HTTP request/response work from your hands, such as gathering user input, validating/converting them, putting them in model objects, invoking actions and rendering the response. This way you end up with basically a JSP or Facelets (XHTML) page for View and a JavaBean class as Model. The JSF components are used to bind the view with the model (such as your ASP.NET web control does) and the FacesServlet uses the JSF component tree to do all the work.