JSP Directives
<%@ directive attribute="value" %> <%@ directive attr1="value" attr2="value" ... attrN="value" %>
Directives are used to specify the structure of the resulting servlet. There are three directives: page, include, and taglib
The page Directive
There are 11 specifiable attributes for this directive: import, contentType, isThreadSafe, session, buffer, autoflush, extends, info, errorPage, and language
Example
<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html" %> <%@ page contentType="application/vnd.ms-excel" %> <%@ page import="java.util.*" %> <%@ page import="java.util.*,java.io.*" %>
Directives can be placed anywhere in the document, but are often placed at the very top.
<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html import="java.util.*" %>
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Hello World</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<H1>Hello World</H1>
Today is: <%= new Date().toString() %>
</BODY>
</HTML>
The include Directive
Is used to include a file in the main document.
There are two versions of this. The first one, shown below, includes the file at translation time.
<%@ include file="relative URL of file" %>
The second version, includes the file at request time.
<jsp:include page="ralative URL of file" flush=true />
The taglib directive
This is used to define custom markup tags. Refer to JSP documentation for details on this.