I just started learning JSP technology, and came across a wall.
How do you output HTML from a method in <%! ... %> JSP declaration block?
This do
<%!
private void myFunc(String Bits, javax.servlet.jsp.JspWriter myOut)
{
try{ myOut.println("<div>"+Bits+"</div>"); }
catch(Exception eek) { }
}
%>
...
<%
myFunc("more difficult than it should be",out);
%>
Try this, it worked for me!
I suppose this would help:
<%!
String someOutput() {
return "Some Output";
}
%>
...
<%= someOutput() %>
Anyway, it isn't a good idea to have code in a view.
You can do something like this:
<%
out.print("<p>Hey!</p>");
out.print("<p>How are you?</p>");
%>
You can do something like this:
<%!
String myMethod(String input) {
return "test " + input;
}
%>
<%= myMethod("1 2 3") %>
This will output test 1 2 3
to the page.
You can't use the 'out' variable (nor any of the other "predeclared" scriptlet variables) inside directives.
The JSP page gets translated by your webserver into a Java servlet. Inside tomcats, for instance, everything inside scriptlets (which start "<%"), along with all the static HTML, gets translated into one giant Java method which writes your page, line by line, to a JspWriter instance called "out". This is why you can use the "out" parameter directly in scriptlets. Directives, on the other hand (which start with "<%!") get translated as separate Java methods.
As an example, a very simple page (let's call it foo.jsp):
<html>
<head/>
<body>
<%!
String someOutput() {
return "Some output";
}
%>
<% someOutput(); %>
</body>
</html>
would end up looking something like this (with a lot of the detail ignored for clarity):
public final class foo_jsp
{
// This is where the request comes in
public void _jspService(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response)
throws IOException, ServletException
{
// JspWriter instance is gotten from a factory
// This is why you can use 'out' directly in scriptlets
JspWriter out = ...;
// Snip
out.write("<html>");
out.write("<head/>");
out.write("<body>");
out.write(someOutput()); // i.e. write the results of the method call
out.write("</body>");
out.write("</html>");
}
// Directive gets translated as separate method - note
// there is no 'out' variable declared in scope
private String someOutput()
{
return "Some output";
}
}
too late to answer it but this help others
<%!
public void printChild(Categories cat, HttpServletResponse res ){
try{
if(cat.getCategoriesSet().size() >0){
res.getWriter().write("") ;
}
}catch(Exception exp){
}
}
%>