Segmentation Fault: Core dumped..;-)

URI HELL: Juggling JSTL Taglib URI settings in JSP pages

Posted : June 3, 2004 at 2:13 pm [America/Los_Angeles]

I read Matt’s tip about JSTL URI settings in JSP 2.0 in haste and ended up paying a couple of hours of my time on what I fondly will henceforth refer to as “URI Hell” .

Here’s a shorter version of my findings:

In Tomcat 4.x, you must use jakarta-taglibs 1.0.5 and when you want to use JSTL in your JSP pages, use:

<%@ taglib prefix=”c” uri=”http://java.sun.com/jstl/core” %>

In Tomcat 5.x, you should use jakarta-taglibs 1.1.0 and when you want to use JSTL in your JSP pages, use:

<%@ taglib prefix=”c” uri=”http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core” %>

Notice the additonal /jsp/ in the URI when using the taglibs in Tomcat 5.x

Of course, you could use jakarta-taglibs 1.0.5 version with Tomcat 5.x (which is really what Matt’s tip was all about), and that’s when
the can of worms or “URI Hell” is really unleashed. I summarize below my findings with the permutations and combinations that I had time to
test:

Tomcat version:
4.1.29

JSTL library version:
1.0.5

Servlet/jsp spec:
2.3/1.2

Web-app entry in web.xml:
<!DOCTYPE web-app
    PUBLIC “-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.3//EN”
    “http://java.sun.com/dtd/web-app_2_3.dtd”>
  <web-app>

Taglib prefix used:
<%@ taglib prefix=”c” uri=”http://java.sun.com/jstl/core” %>

Tomcat version:
5.0.26

JSTL library version:
1.1.0

servlet/jsp spec:
2.4/2.0

web-app entry in web.xml:
<web-app xmlns=”http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee”
xmlns:xsi=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance”
xsi:schemaLocation=”http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd”
version=”2.4″>

taglib prefix used:
<%@ taglib prefix=”c” uri=”http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core” %>

Tomcat version:
5.0.26

JSTL library version:
1.0.5

servlet/jsp spec:
2.3/1.2

web-app entry in web.xml:
<!DOCTYPE web-app
PUBLIC “-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.3//EN”
“http://java.sun.com/dtd/web-app_2_3.dtd”>
<web-app>

taglib prefix used:
<%@ taglib prefix=”c” uri=”http://java.sun.com/jstl/core” %>

Tomcat version:
5.0.26

JSTL library version:
1.0.5

servlet/jsp spec:
2.4/2.0

web-app entry in web.xml:
<web-app xmlns=”http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee”
xmlns:xsi=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance”
xsi:schemaLocation=”http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd”
version=”2.4″>

taglib prefix used:
<%@ taglib prefix=”c” uri=”http://java.sun.com/jstl/core_rt” %>

Did I hear you yell “Velocity. Duh…”

- Anand

Category: Application Development