Books

Average customer rating:

Beautifully written
Perfect book for a structured reader.
Good, but not great, user guide for JSP
Horribly disorganized
I wish I'd bought a different book

JavaServer Pages, 3rd Edition
Hans Bergsten
Manufacturer: O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0596005636

Book Description

JavaServer Pages (JSP) has built a huge following since the release of JSP 1.0 in 1999, providing Enterprise Java developers with a flexible tool for the development of dynamic web sites and web applications. While new point releases over the years, along with the introduction of the JSP Standard Tag Library (JSTL), have incrementally improved the rough areas of the first version of the JSP specification, JSP 2.0 takes this technology to new heights. JavaServer Pages, Third Edition, is completely revised and updated to cover the JSP 2.0 and JSTL 1.1 specifications. It includes detailed coverage of the Expression Language (EL) incorporated into JSP 2.0, the JSTL 1.1 tag libraries and the new function library, the new tag file format that enables custom tag library development without Java code, the simplified Java tag library API, improvements in the JSP XML syntax, and more. Further, it details setup of the Apache Tomcat server, JSP and JSTL syntax and features, error handling and debugging, authentication and personalization, database access, XML processing, and internationalization. This book recognizes the different needs of the two groups of professionals who want to learn JSP: page authors interested in using JSP elements in web pages, and programmers concerned with learning the JSP API and using JSP effectively as a part of an enterprise application. If you're in the first group, you'll learn from the practical web application examples in the second part of the book. If you're in the latter group, you'll appreciate the detailed coverage of advanced topics in the third part, such as how to integrate servlets and JavaBeans components with JSP using the popular Apache Struts MVC framework, and how to develop custom tag libraries using the JSP API, with realistic examples that you can use as a springboard for your own libraries. "Hans Bergsten, a JSP expert group veteran and one of our most active contributors, has thoroughly and accurately captured the new features of JSP 2.0 and JSTL 1.1 in a way that is well-organized and easy to understand. With excellent, to-the-point examples, this book is a 'must have' for any serious JSP 2.0 developer." --Mark Roth, JSP 2.0 Specification Lead, Sun Microsystems, Inc. Hans Bergsten is the founder of Gefion Software, a company focused on Java services and products based on J2EE technologies. Hans has been an active participant in the working groups for both the servlet and JSP specifications since their inception and contributes to other related JCP specifications, such as JSP Standard Tag Library (JSTL) and JavaServer Faces (JSF), and, as one of the initial members of the Apache Jakarta Project Management Committee, helped develop the Apache Tomcat reference implementation for the servlet and JSP specifications.

Customer Reviews:

Beautifully written.......2006-04-14

This is an extremely well written and informative book. I have
lots of experience with servlets, so I don't know how the book
will appeal to page designers, but I had no problem reading and
enjoying the chapters oriented more toward them. I used to look
at JSP and see the same kind of maintenance nightmare that comes
with something like PHP when your project gets large. I have
been using WebMacro/Velocity but am now a convert to JSP since
it has matured. I love the author's philosophy of no scriptlets
in your JSPs. I own many programing books, but I believe this
is the best written I've seen.

Perfect book for a structured reader........2006-03-08

If you are looking for a quick cookbook this should not be your choice. If you want to learn JSP in depth, buy it right now. Hans guides you from the basics to comprehensive details of JSP technology in a very structured way.

In any case, (from my point of view) JSP is not the whole jigsaw for building web applications, it's just a piece of it. So don't expect to be able to build real web applications if you just have read this book. At least, consider reading also Java, Struts/MVC and SQL.

Good, but not great, user guide for JSP.......2005-12-27

Perhaps this is as good a user guide as is possible for JSP, which is a good, but not great techology.

JSP integrates between web markup user interfaces (usually HTML) and back-end java technology (usually servlets), and best practices have most of the interesting work done in these technologies, not in JSP. JSP's flaws come from too many spurious features that lead the unsuspecting user far away from best practices.

JSP's strengths as a template technology for web view markup come in its 2.0 version with its addition of programmatic logic to markup (JSTL for logical branches and loops, and tags for subroutines) which allow for development of markup without repeated code. This is a great benefit of JSP, and this book does a fairly good job of explaining it for JSTL/logic, but talks around it with confusing examples for tags/subroutines. To this book's credit, it is the only decent reference I have found for JSP 2.0 tag library development.

Best practices with JSP as an integration technology involve what is called "Model 2 MVC" where the JSP page is strictly used only as a template for markup (the "view" which is the "V" from "MVC"), a JavaBean is used for the M-"model" and a single servlet is used for the C-"controller". This concept is mentioned in this book, but its up to you to figure out how to implement it, and the book is full of examples that show off unrealistic uses of JSP's spurious features and are anything but best practices. At some point in using JSP's and servlets, you are going to have to go head-to-head (actually, head-to-confusing-XML) with a real deployment descriptor, and this book will give you little help as to why it doesn't work.

Until someone writes a truly useful reference for JSP and servlets, you will have to follow the time-honored tradition of finding an example that works and cut-and-pasting it into your web application. Poring over this book will help some, as will poring over Craig McClanahan's online doc that comes with Tomcat. The best book I've found so far for explaining best practice design with JSP is Rod Johnson's "expert one-on-one J2EE Design and Development" (read the chapters on web-tier MVC design and views in the web tier) though it's description of JSP is somewhat dated, and it won't help you out with implementation details.

Horribly disorganized.......2005-07-21

O'Reilly falls down on its usual excellent editorial job and delivers an undisciplined unstructured mess that is useless as a reference. The JSTL examples are so incomplete as to be virtually worthless. As an experienced developer, I spent my 45 bucks expecting a useful reference and practical guide, instead getting a beginner's tour and some appendices of jstl syntax spec.

I wish I'd bought a different book.......2005-04-19

There is some really good information in this book. The problem is, you have to wade through a mess to find it. The author is constantly referencing chapters later in the book, suggesting that the reader look ahead for information on the subject currently being talked about. Much of the information in later chapters should have been included earlier on. Besides the annoyance of having to read ahead to keep up with the current subject, the author goes back on himself constantly. Examples are shown as a functional way to do things, and then later on, I found myself being told not to follow the methods explained previously because they arent an efficient way to work. On top of this, the language of the book seems overcomplicated. Simple concepts are explained in a long drawn out fashion left me wondering where I had lost my way.

I am picking things up that I wouldn't have figured out without the book, but I'm quite convinced that another book would have had me writing applications already.

Core JSTL: Mastering the JSP Standard Tag Library

Average customer rating:

Geary Rocks on JSP! Excellent author
J2EE Guy
Reliable book from a reliable author
Core JSTL: Mastering the JSP Standard Tag Library
Take the Next Step with Java Server Pages

Core JSTL: Mastering the JSP Standard Tag Library
David Geary , and David M. Geary
Manufacturer: Prentice Hall PTR
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0131001531

Customer Reviews:

Geary Rocks on JSP! Excellent author.......2006-04-23

I have seen David Geary speak and have read his writing many times and there is no one I know that makes JSP more interesting or more understandable. Core JSTL: Mastering the JSP Standard Tag Library is easily the best book on the subject I have read, or used in practice, or recommended to others. It is clear, concise, and logical. Trust me on this one... you will be a fan of Geary and his books after reading this one.

J2EE Guy.......2005-03-16

One of the best books i found on JSTL. Provides in-depth knowledge & extensive examples of JSTL.
This book helps us to understand why, where and how to use JSTL tags. follows the typical MVC pattern [ a clear separation of View from Model]
Though, I am not a great fan of SQL, XML tags, the Core & I18N JSTL tags are not only valuable but also easy to use. Now we could have non-Java programmers to design all of your JSP pages.
[our last project leveraged JSTL/ Struts/ Tiles frameworks]

Reliable book from a reliable author.......2003-11-24

Clear, concise. solid coverage of a core technology for web development in java. This book is at the same time a useful reference and an easy tutorial. Covers the EL scripting language, base, iteration, xml, sql, networking actions.
Complete, easy to read and with working example code for EVERY concept. D.Geary and M Hall are the reference authors in the
Servlet-JSP World. If you are doing any kind of development using JSP you need this book. 'nuff said.

Core JSTL: Mastering the JSP Standard Tag Library.......2003-09-03

I was new to JSTL with some JSP/Servlet experiences.
This is all I need to get started with JSTL.
Lots of example codes to help me understand.
I was particulary interested in I18N and Formatting sections and this book covers every area of JSTL including these sections fairy well. (Lots of books tend to cover very lightly on i18n sections)

I highly recommend this book! This is my JSTL reference book. I also looked at other JSLT books, but I think this is the best by far.

Take the Next Step with Java Server Pages.......2003-03-20

Last year I built a website that used Java Server Pages to dynamically generate most of the pages. It worked well, but was very kludgy. JSPs invariably mix the HTML display code with some of the internal data logic. Through a judicious use of the
Model-View-Controller paradigm, I was able to reduce this mixing. But a minimal amount was still inevitable. This is a common experience with JSPs. You end up with files containing java code and HTML. Ugly and brittle. Plus, it calls upon two areas of expertise. A separation of the two would be much more
robust, and allow people with skills in only one of these areas to still contribute to the development.

In answer to this, Sun has been refining its Standard Tag Library. Specifically, it now has an expression language that is a programming language in its own right and is comprehensively described in this book, which bears Sun's official impramateur. Programmers versed in other languages can quickly absorb this. Thru it, you can easily write code to access Java Beans and other java programs. Plenty of clear examples are provided.

Of interest to several will be how to use STL to hook up to back end SQL databases; transferring from them into webpages and transmitting user changes back into the databases.

The author also covers the important case of interacting with XML, which is now a de facto standard for data interchange. Nor does he neglect describing issues of internationalisation. Practical for those who have to support several languages.

The sum of all these is to make this book very useful for those of you needing to build JSPs in business applications. I do wish I had this book last year!

JSTL: JSP Standard Tag Library Kick Start

Average customer rating:

Big book, bad code, little help
Just what I needed!

JSTL: JSP Standard Tag Library Kick Start
Jeff Heaton
Manufacturer: Sams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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JSP and Tag Libraries for Web Development

ASIN: 0672324504

Book Description

The JSP Standard Tag Library is a collection of commonly used functions and tools invaluable to JSP developers to avoid re-creating the same functions on site after site. Sun has indicated that JSP development should be based around using tag libraries going forward, and will relase JSP STL, as their official library. This book starts with an in-depth deiscussion of the JSP STL, then goes beyond the standard library to teach developers to create their own tags to further encapsulate the most common features of their specific applications. Along the way, readers will also learn to use tags to access data, process XML, handle expressions, and further customize pages for international visitors. Later chapters explain how readers can expand the Standard Tab Library by creating their own tags.

Download Description

Customer Reviews:

Big book, bad code, little help.......2004-07-09

This is a relatively large book and one would expect it to have a lot of material inside. Suprisingly, it does not.
JSTL is described at length but the more you delve into the book you find that you are not learning much and that examples are not really applicable. Another qualm with this book is that its examples contain really bad HTML code - and I know, we are dealing with JSPs and JSTL, but if you are an author, correct HTML will not hurt.

There are other books available on the topic - get one of them (stay away from JSTL: Practical Guide which is even worse than this book).

Just what I needed!.......2004-03-13

Jeff Heaton has done an excellent job with this book! I get tired of bloated, windy programming books. Usually I buy a book to help me get started on a task at hand. This books definitely got me started and instantly allowed me to reap the benefits of JSTL! (Although I still prefer Coldfusion MX ;)

Average customer rating:

Indepth coverage, excellent examples
Best book on JSP Tags
Great Book on JSP Tags
For learning JSP Tags, this is your only option.
Excellent book

JSP Tag Libraries
Gal Shachor , Adam Chace , and Magnus Rydin
Manufacturer: Manning Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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JSR168 Portlet Development: Learning How to Develop Effective, JSR-168, Portal Applications, Everything from the GenericPortlet to the Struts and JSF Apache Portlet Bridges

ASIN: 193011009X

Book Description

Shows HTML and Java programmers how to create and use JSP tag components to perform iterations and access databases, and manipulate EJB's, e-mail systems, Java Beans, and e-commerce applications and WAP that work with cellular phones.

Customer Reviews:

Indepth coverage, excellent examples.......2002-04-05

This is a review I did for AustonJUG group. Since it is a long review (more than 1000 words), I only post the overview here....Working with other server side Java components, such as JavaBeans, EJBs and JDBC, properly designed custom tag libraries allow developers to encapsulate and reuse code. Custom tags create a tag-based content authoring environment and allow web authors to write highly dynamic web applications in HTML style without learning the Java programming language. So, architects, developers and content authors can all benefit from studying JSP custom tags.

Manning's book "JSP Tag Libraries" by Gal Shachor, Adam Chace and Magnus Rydin (ISBN 1-930110-09-X) is an excellent JSP custom tag text suited for both new and seasoned developers. This book covers JSP specifications 1.1 and 1.2.

One of the main strengths of this book is that it does not merely repeat API documentations. The authors put a lot of effort to show the readers the big picture, the philosophy behind JSP custom tags and how to apply them in real world applications. This book talks about "why" as well as "how".

After studying this book, the reader should be able to understand:

* What JSP custom tags are and why we need them;
* How custom tags work;
* How to use tags to perform common and advanced tasks;
* Steps to develop and deploy tag applications;
* Basic design patterns for tag applications;

The book is very well organized and well written. It is full of excellent code examples. Those examples put the techniques into context. The readers can learn effectively by playing with the examples. As added bonuses, the code examples can be easily adopted for real world applications. In section "Case Studies", the authors discuss two complete multi-tier E-commerce and M-commerce applications. They offer not only code examples on applying practical techniques but also insights and templates on how to design good JSP applications.

All the code examples in the book are annotated with in-depth explaining text. That truly helps readers to understand not only what the code is doing but also what the authors intended to do.

However, there are still things I wish the authors could improve in the next version:

1. The authors had excellent discussions on how to implement conditional tags, iteration tags and database access tags. But they did not mention similar tag libraries under development by the Jakarta Taglib project. I would really like to hear about their insights on the designs of Jakarta tag libraries and many similar libraries developed by commercial companies.

2. In the "Case Studies" part, it is quite easy to add a parallel WAP store front to the JDBC-driven WebStore through another set of custom tags. That would really drive home the power of separating business logic from presentation logic and highlight the flexibility of a JSP custom tag based solution. I wish the authors had done that.

Overall, I think this is an excellent book and would like to HIGHLY RECOMMEND it to anyone working with JavaServer Pages technology.

Best book on JSP Tags.......2001-11-11

There are now quite a few JSP books around and some of them mention JSP Tag libraries. In a typical n-tier web application, JSP tag libraries enable the presentation layer to be cleanly separated from the business layer. This allows simple scripted pages to call complex Java code without confusing the HTML web page Developer. By using JSP tag libraries, the developers have reusable code that can provide easy access to different J2EE services.

This book starts of with a quick introduction to dynamic web servers, Java servlets and Java Server Pages (JSP). We recommend that readers new to JSP should read a book dedicated to JSP before reading this one. Chapter 3 begins with an explaination of JSP custom tags, setting up the environment (Tomcat) and creating a simple Hello World tag. The authors provide enough information to explain the example without confusing the reader. They also suggest solutions to why the example might not work, providing a useful insight into what to check if something goes wrong.

Chapter 4 gives an overview of the tag API (interface and methods) and Chapter 4 explains how to create a tag lib descriptor (TLD) and how the JSP runtime uses this information to produce a servlet. Chapter 6 and 7 present some coding techniques to build a tag library and use an example of building a tag library for sending email. This is a simple and effective example that describes the process of developing and using JSP tab libraries.

Chapter 8 is important because it describes in detail how to use JavaBeans with tags. Starting off with information about the Reflection API, the authors show how to create a JavaBean and use Tags to present the information. This technique allows the developer to remove a lot of Java code from the JSP, making the page easier to understand and maintain. Chapter 9 and 10 show how to develop condition and interating tags.

Chapter 11 focuses on designing a database presentation tag library. This chapter answers many useful questions such as, Why not just wrap everything in a JavaBean? Again the authors give an exellent explaination of a very important topic. Realistically many readers would not be accessing a database directly from a tag library so the next chapters present J2EE and how to access Enterprise JavaBeans using tag libraries.

Chapters 13 and 14 are very interesting because they explain two case studies; a JDBC-driven web store and an EJB driven WAP store. The authors go over the design and development in quite a bit of detail and it is useful to all readers wanting to use JSP tag libraries in their projects. The last chapter covers tips and tricks, showing how to generalize tags using the Command design pattern and discussing maintainence, performance and debugging.

Suprisingly, the Apache Struts project is not mentioned in this book, however many of the concepts found in Struts are explained here. The authors have done an excellent job in explaining how to develop and use JSP tag libraries. We found the authors' insight very useful and on the whole the book is easy to read.
visualbuilder.com

Great Book on JSP Tags.......2001-11-02

I have written several custom JSP tags and I wish this book had been available when I started, it would have saved lots of time. All of the issues I ran into during my development efforts have been clearly outlined in this book. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in JSP custom tags. This book would be a great resource for those with some experience with custom tags. But it also provides a great introduction for those that are new to the topic.

For learning JSP Tags, this is your only option........2001-10-25

Most other books I have read on this topic include merely one or two chapters for custom JSP tags. This book gives you chapter after chapter of custom tags and holds your hand throughout the learning process. The authors are clearly developers themselves, which shows in the quality of the work. The beginning chapters are particularly useful for those who are completely new to the topic. In all, a fine book, I hold back giving it 5 stars due to the lack of discussion of Struts. Please add that to the next print, otherwise this is a valuable book that has no competitor in the market.

Excellent book.......2001-10-05

Contrary to the previous review, the Java classes in the book do compile. I highly recommend the book.

Mastering JSP Custom Tags and Tag Libraries

Average customer rating:

Mastering JSP Tags?
Finally
JSTL coverage premature
Be careful !!!
Great coverage of Taglibs and JSTL

Mastering JSP Custom Tags and Tag Libraries
James Goodwill
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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SCJP Exam for J2SE 5: A Concise and Comprehensive Study Guide for The Sun Certified Java Programmer Exam

ASIN: 0471213039

Book Description

Developed by the open source community to make writing JavaServer Pages (JSP) faster and easier, JSP custom tags give Java developers the ability to insert XML style tags, representing complex business logic, into a JSP. This code is reusable and can help to simplify and reduce the amount of original code that needs to be written.
* James Goodwill is a well-respected authority and bestselling author of books on Java Web applications
* Provides a hands-on, code-intensive guide for building and using custom tags to create enterprise-strength JSP applications and examines the concepts and techniques needed to build sophisticated Web applications
* Companion Web site contains the JSP, servlet, and custom tag code found in the book

Customer Reviews:

Mastering JSP Tags?.......2003-02-09

This book does cover a lot of ground. You will probably learn about JSP custom tags and tag libraries if you can get through all the typos and errors in the example code. I think this book does a good job of covering the mechanics of JSP Tags. I don't think it covers the design aspects of using tags very well. I would have rated it higher if someone had bothered to proofread this book.

Finally.......2003-02-04

Finally, I was able to find a tags book that made since. I loved everything about the text. It covered the process of creating tags from the ground up, including excellant coverage of a tags life. Great Job.

JSTL coverage premature.......2002-05-31

This book's coverage of JSTL is not useful. JSTL was not yet released when this book was published, so it covers a premature beta version that isn't useful to learn.

Be careful !!!.......2002-05-11

There're over 100 typos !!!!!!!!
I cannot show the typos here becuase there're many many many mistakes. I don't know why other reviewers don't mention it.
Maybe It's a disadvantage of the author so that Amazon doesn't let the review show up.

I totally don't recommend to buy this book.
You can buy this book after you manster taglibs with other books. :)

Great coverage of Taglibs and JSTL.......2002-05-02

This book packs a lot into 400 pages, and is the most cutting-edge tags book I've seen. It uses a custom-built contact manager (all the code included) to demonstrate how the various components of a Java web app work together and how to deploy it using Tomcat. The app uses both MySQL and Access as its database, which should satisfy most readers. The illustrations explaining the servlet life cycle were excellent!

The book gives a thorough introduction to the various types of tags (simple, tags with bodies, cooperating, etc) and how they are used. Lots of practical code examples here. The illustrations in this part of the book very clearly explained the how custom tag components work together.

The Jakarta Taglibs coverage is very good, it is not exhaustive, but that's not bad since some of those tags should never see the light of day. I thought the author did a great job of picking the useful ones, explaining them, and providing code to demonstrate how they are used in combination. The coverage of the new Java standard tags is great, too. It includes info on the new expression language and how to change the language your tags use. Again, lots of good code to demonstrate usage.

Coverage of database concepts and tags was particularly good throughout this book. My only suggestion is to include even more code to demonstrate complex uses of the tags, but this would have made the book longer I suppose, and I do like that it is concise and easy to reference.

JSP and Tag Libraries for Web Development

Average customer rating:

Thumbs down.
Could Have Been Better
THE Taglibs Book
Worth buying
Jsp and Tag Libraries for Web development

JSP and Tag Libraries for Web Development
Wellington L. S. Da Silva , and Wellington L.S. da Silva
Manufacturer: New Riders Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0735710953

Customer Reviews:

Thumbs down........2002-10-23

This book really needed a good editor and a ghost writer who knows how to simply explain technical subject. The author probably knows the technical stuff but his explanations aren't at all useful. If you don't already have good background in the material, you'll not learn it here.

My biggest complaints are about the example code.
1. JSP, Struts and Tag libraries are, in the big picture, all about generating HTML. Despite that, NOWHERE in this 442 page book is a single screen shot showing output! There are examples that go on for three pages of coding but do not have a single page showing what the example produced.
2. The examples are cluttered with lots of extraneous code that detracts from the point of the example. In one case, most of the example code had to do with JNDI and not about the tag he was creating. I found that many times I had to wade through a page or two of Java code before I got to the few lines that were the point of the example.
3. The explantion of most examples is at the end, after pages of code, and usually quite short. The publisher should have set the explanation comments in bold and off to the right of the key areas.

Don't buy this book for the explanation of Struts, either. There are far better examples and tutorials on the Apache Struts web site.

Not recommended.

Could Have Been Better.......2002-03-31

I find it somewhat difficult to say that it is really a good book.I found three major shortcomings:

1) A lot of code is quoted from other sources without explanations.It is not uncommon to find 3 pages of code ending with three lines of explanations.
2) A lot of details are included in the text which rightly belong to an appendix.Such details merely distract the attention of the reader from the main arguments.
3) There is a lot of JSP code without a single illustration(screen-shot) as to how this code may render in a browser.The reader must get the picture himself.Again this detracts the attention from the main argument.

On a positive note,I could say that the author has included 3 chapters on the Struts framework,starting the discussion with a good explanation of how and why the MVC pattern has to be generalized from the restricted UI case to the more general web case,leading to MVC2.But this part of the book also suffers from the same shortcomings.

In conclusion, I would say,if more explanations are added,the main text is stripped off unnecessary appendix-type details,and
JSP code is accompanied by screen-shots, this could turn into a very good book.

THE Taglibs Book.......2002-03-08

I've found this book extremely useful and enjoyed reading it a lot.
The chapters on tag design and cooperating tags are resourceful, detailed and also very well exemplified. And the book also provides an impressive introduction to the Struts framework.
I keep it as my daily reference.

Worth buying.......2002-03-06

This book covers Tag Libraries and its collateral components from beginers perspective up to the presentation of comercial and open source tags already available on the market, with a very nice introduction to the Struts framework.
It takes a progressive approach to the topic, presenting each detail in tag development, tag collaboration and application development with lots of examples and reviews on each chapter.
With no doubts this book is an excellent reference to the Tag Library Technology.

Jsp and Tag Libraries for Web development.......2002-01-11

This book is intended to be read by anyone involved in web application and web design.It is started with Servlet API,explanation of it's component and JSP scriplets and it's
run time environment with example.It has also the explanation about JSP Tag and XML Tag.And very nicely covered every aspect
of Tag development from simple to complicate level.It has sample code on each aspect.And also downloadable codes are available on internet.Every chapter has summary section,which is useful for the quick reference.At the end it hsh covered complete revie of the Apache Jakarta Struts Projects, its components, and its tag libraries. that completes your case study and background.It has provided JRun,the Orion and Bluestone commercial Tag Libraries available in the market.These are also discussed with example.
So, this book is suggested for,who is begineer for Tag development and who wants reference
for commercial Tag development.

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