JSP Tag Libraries

Rating:
Summary: The best advanced JSP book so far
Review: As in title this is the best JSP book I have read so far. But you should have some basic background of JSP. The book is one of my favourite books among Java Servlet Programming by Jason Hunter or Enterprise Java with UML by CT Arrington.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book
Review: Contrary to the previous review, the Java classes in the book do compile. I highly recommend the book.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book on JSP Tags
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: For learning JSP Tags, this is your only option.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Best book on JSP Tags
Review: 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

Rating:
Summary: Great tag book
Review: This book is a great reference in tackling the powerful capabilities of jsp tag libraries. For the regular jsp developer, this book will fast become an indispensible part of your home library. Great examples and thorough explanations make this book an easy and productive read.

Rating:
Summary: Indepth coverage, excellent examples
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A book not to buy
Review: This is a very bad book. The examples/sample code do not work. Some of the Java classes will not even compile. If you want to spend your time debugging the author's sloppy code and finishing their incomplete examples this is the book for you. If you want to learn tag libraries and have working examples you can actually use, buy someone else's book.

Rating:
Summary: Awesome book on tag libraries, very well written
Review: While most of the newer JSP books have sections or chapters on tag libraries, this book is totally devoted to this important area.

It is extremely well written, logically planned and executed.

It is meticulous in the details. Very few errors or typos. "Crafted" is a word that comes to mind.

The style is clear and conversational, in which the pros and cons of various possible alternatives are examined before plunging into the details of the selected one, much like the way a developer would think about it.

The sample code is great and there is a web site from the authors (which unfortunately seems to be neglected.)

I stopped the reading of all the other books on Tag Libraries to finish this one, and now I can motor through them with ease, spotting hasty assumptions and errors right away. (there is a lot of sloppy writing in many other books, but not this one)

I only wish I could have had the benefits of these authors insights and analysis regarding the open source tag libraries at Jakarta, but they are not mentioned. Maybe another book or paper?

I look forward for other books by these authors, and would buy them without hesitation, just to experience their masterful technical approach to software development.

A fantastic book, if that is a term that can be applied to technical material. :)