This is a Wiki repository of various tag libraries and their corresponding documentation. You can generate documentation for tag libraries using the Tag Library Documentation Generator which can be found at http://taglibrarydoc.dev.java.net/
Please add to this list! When adding a library, please keep with the format, and be sure to specify:
Tag library name
Link to tag library homepage using the text 'web'
Direct link to tag library documentation using the text 'doc'
Brief description / info about tag library
Minimum JSP requirement (and any other requirements)
The JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library (JSTL) encapsulates as simple tags the core functionality common to many Web applications. JSTL has support for common, structural tasks such as iteration and conditionals, tags for manipulating XML documents, internationalization tags, and SQL tags. It also provides a framework for integrating existing custom tags with JSTL tags.
JavaServer Faces technology simplifies building user interfaces for JavaServer applications. Developers of various skill levels can quickly build web applications by: assembling reusable UI components in a page; connecting these components to an application data source; and wiring client-generated events to server-side event handlers.
contains tags which can be used to access information contained in the ServletContext? for a web application. Tags are provided to access information in "application"-scoped attributes and web application initialization parameters, which are defined in the "/WEB-INF/web.xml" file.
In dicussions about how best to design tag libraries, issues of performance sometimes arise. The simple 'benchmark' tag library should aid in the performance testing of other taglibs and JSP pages in general. This library isn't a full-featured benchmarking package. It's just a simple way to get rough data if you want to sketch the relative performance of tags, tag combinations, or arbitrary JSP fragments.
The Bean Scripting Framework (BSF) is an architecture for incorporating scripting into Java applications and applets. Scripting languages such as Netscape Rhino (Javascript), Tcl, Python, NetRexx?, Ruby, JudoScript?, and XSLT are commonly used to augment an application's function or to script together a set of application components to form an application.
The Cache Taglib lets you cache fragments of your JSP pages. In a large web application where performance is important, caching might be appropriate at many levels within your architecture. Caching fragments of JSP pages is the option that's simultaneously the most flexible and the most tedious (that is, the most noticeable to JSP page authors). Using the Cache Taglib, you can mark individual sections of your JSP page as cacheable.
The DateTime? custom tag library contains tags which can be used to handle date and time related functions. Tags are provided for formatting a Date for output, generating a Date from HTML forum input, using time zones, and localization.
The I18N? custom tag library contains tags that help manage the complexity of creating internationalized web applications. For those not familiar with the term "i18n", it is a standard abbreviation for "internationalization", which starts with the letter I, ends with the letter N, and contains a total of 18 letters. While some may see similarity with the struts message tag, these tags have several advantages, particularly with respect to message arguments, not to mention the fact that its a standalone tag library and doesn't require the user to adopt (or rip components out of) struts.
The "input" tag extension library lets you present HTML form elements that are tied to the ServletRequest? that caused the current JSP page to run. That is, using this library, you can easily prepopulate form elements with prior values that the user has chosen -- or with default values for the first time a user hits a web page. This is useful when you need to present the same page to the user several times (e.g., for server-side validation).
The IO custom tag library contains tags which can be used to perform a variety of input and output related tasks from inside JSP. A variety of protocols are supported such as HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, XML-RPC and SOAP requests.
The JMS custom tag library contains tags which can be used to perform a variety of JMS related operations such as sending and receiving messages from inside JSP. This taglib is currently built on top of the Messenger component from Jakarta Commons.
The JNDI Tag Library creates an instance of a javax.naming.Context based on the values of the attributes providing some of the standard values. In addition to the System properties and the jndi.properties, some standard properties are scanned in the pageContext attributes.
The Log library allows you to embed logging calls in your JSP which can be output to a variety of destinations thanks to the power of the log4j project.
Send simple plain text, HTML or multipart emails with local or external attachments. Includes ability to send in a background thread, and to save messages in a scope for later use.
The Page custom tag library contains tags which can be used to access all the information about the PageContext? for a JSP page. Tags are provided to access information in "page"-scoped attributes.
The Regexp custom tag library contains tags which can be used to perform Perl syntax regular expressions. These tags implement the 3 most common Perl5 operations involving regular expressions:
[m]/pattern/[i][m][s][x]
s/pattern/replacement/[g][i][m][o][s][x]
and split()
As with Perl, any non-alphanumeric character can be used in lieu of the slashes.
The REQUEST custom tag library contains tags which can be used to access all the information about the HTTP request for a JSP page. Tags are provided to access information in the HTTP request for HTTP input parameters from a POST or GET, HTTP Headers, Cookies, request attributes, and session information related to this request.
The Response custom tag library contains tags which can be used to set all the information for an HTTP response for a JSP page. This includes creating cookies and setting their values, setting HTTP headers, returning back an HTTP error, or sending an HTTP redirect.
The scrape tag library can scrape or extract content from web documents and display the content in your JSP. For example, you could scrape stock quotes from other web sites and display them in your pages.
The Session JSP tag library provides tags for reading or modifying client HttpSession? information. A servlet container uses an HttpSession? to store information about a clients session on the server. By default a JSP page will create a session for a user. The user is tied to the session using either a Cookie or by using URL rewriting. This is how you can tie information to a user between multiple HTTP requests to your server. Session Attributes are what makes it possible to store information about a clients session between multiple HTTP requests. A session attribute consists of a name and value. To save information about a users session on your server use the setattribute tag.
XTags is a JSP custom tag library for working with XML. XTags implements an XSLT-like language allowing XML to be styled and processed from directly within a JSP page using familiar XSLT and XPath techniques. In many ways XTags is like XSLT implemented in JSP allowing you to seamlessly work with JSP, custom tags, JavaBeans? and the whole J2EE? platform from inside a single piece of JSP! XTags is currently built on top of dom4j the flexible open source XML framework for the Java platform. Though increasingly XTags will use a pluggable XPath engine to support the travesal of DOM and Java Beans too.
Contains tags that form a bridge between the JSP view and the other components of the application. These tags generate HTML or XHTML compatible markup.
Requires JSP 1.1
If you are running in a JSP 1.2 or later environment, you may use the EL-enabled version of this library.
Contains tags that are aware of the nesting relationship inside parent tags (and corresponding beans), leading to shorter property reference expressions.
Requires JSP 1.1
If you are running in a JSP 1.2 or later environment, you may use the EL-enabled version of this library.
This suite provides 170+ custom JSP tags for common programming tasks faced by JSP developers. At this moment Coldtags suite is probably the largest collection of custom JSP tags over the Net and continues to grow. And now this suite includes custom tags similar to web controls in .NET framework.