Jsp tricks to make templating easier?
JSP Tag Files can supercharge your templating chores, making it absurdly easy to create reusable custom tags for standard content like headers and footers.
Create a tag (header.tag):
Use the tag in your JSP:
This approach boosts the ease of maintainability in your JSP projects while enhancing their modularity.
Mastering template inheritance with personalized tags
Use Tag Files effectively to implement template inheritance within your JSP projects. Templating in JSP is no longer about mindlessly duplicating common elements like headers, footers, or navigation bars. It's time to refactor these elements into Tag Files and watch the magic unfold when related JSPs inherit them. This approach minimizes redundancies in your code, making updates a breeze!
Don't just template — be dynamic!
The jsp:element comes to your rescue when you want to define dynamic content. It allows you to make live changes to your template content without disturbing the static heart of the template.
Custom tags, on the other hand, are your trump card for nested templates and reusing common patterns. This unchains your JSP pages, leading them towards a more extensible and modular design.
From chaos to order — simplifying JSP Templating
When crafting universal templates, the motto should be "Keep it Simple, Stupid!" (KISS). Ditch the habit of cluttering your template with server-side logic. JSTL tags combined Tag Files are your allies to produce clean, lightweight templates.
To ensure a smooth flow of data through nested templates, you should wisely use request-scope attributes. By doing so, your passing of parameters remains tidy, and global scope is saved from unnecessary data posing as perfect clutter-culprits.
Taking help from open-source for easier layout management
The open-source community is a gem-trove filled with tag libraries designed for template inheritance. For instance, kwon37xi/jsp-template-inheritance from the GitHub repository offers a set of tags such as layout:block, layout:extends, and layout:put for defining sections in your templates and inserting content, respectively.
This adds practical options to your JSP arsenal, eliminating the need to include redundant top/bottom wrappers, hence further simplifying the templating landscape.
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