Web Development with Java Server Pages

This tutorial is as good as any that's available, and covers all of the necessary JSP directives and syntax. For each directive, possible attributes are listed in convenient tables, which makes this also a worthwhile reference to everyday JSP development that explores the nooks and crannies of JSP APIs, and how pages are built (and cached) on today's JSP platforms.

Web Development with JavaServer Pages also does a good job of showing how to design JavaBean components and integrate them into your JSPs through tags. (Ideally, beans should do the calculation and "thinking" on the middle tier, while JSPs work on the front end.) You'll learn the right way to proceed with JSPs and beans--reinforced via a number of effective code samples. A larger example, a Web database of frequently asked questions (FAQs), demonstrates the big picture with JSPs and beans. Final chapters turn toward a useful aspect of JSP, custom tags, which allow Java programmers to extend the set of available tags for JSP front-end designers. There's even a sample of interactive tags, in which tags work together with other tags, with sample code.

Filled with plenty of details that carry the reader well beyond the basics, this text is one of the better available tutorials for learning JSPs. Its no-nonsense presentation style and useful examples can help put JSP development into the hands of anyone who has some prior HTML or Java experience. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered:

• Overview of JavaServer Pages (JSPs)
• Server-side scripting languages, compared
• The advantages of Java servlets and JSPs
• Tutorial for basic JSP (tags and directives, expressions and scriptlets, flow control, and comments)
• JSP implicit objects, including request, response, and out
• Tutorial for simple JavaBean components
• The JSP useBean, setProperty, and getProperty tags
• Defining bean properties, including indexed properties
• Sample beans for JSPs
• Quick tutorial for JDBC and Java database programming
• Web application architecture using JSPs and beans
• Servlets vs. JSPs
• Introduction to Enterprise JavaBeans
• Case study for an FAQ database
• Web archive (WAR) files, and deploying JSP-based Web applications
• Advanced topics in JSP development, including using cookies, error pages, JavaScript, and validating HTML form data
• Sample JSPs, including banner ads and a random-quote generator
• Custom tag libraries (basic and advanced interactive tags)
• Running Tomcat
• Combining JSPs with applets
• JSP syntax reference