Directives

JSP directives tells the web container how to translate a JSP page into a Servlet.

Types of directives

Name Syntax Note
Page Directive <%@page attribute="value"%> Defines attributes applicable to an entire JSP page.
Include Directive <%@include file="resource name"%> To include the contents of any resource.
Taglib Directive <%@taglib uri="uri of tag lib" prefix="prefix for tag lib"%> Used to define a tag library that may contains many tags.

Sample code for page directive (github)

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<!-- page import directive -->
<%@ page import="java.util.*" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>ourownjava.com</title>
</head>
<body>
<%
Date date = new Date();
%>
Current time is : <%= date %>
</body>
</html>

Sample code for include directive (github)

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>ourownjava.com</title>
</head>
<body>
<h4>This is the header.jsp</h4>
</body>
</html>
<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>ourownjava.com</title>
</head>
<body>
<!-- include directive example -->
<%@ include file="header.jsp" %>
</body>
</html>

Taglib directive example (github)

<!-- taglib directive example -->
<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" prefix="c"%>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>ourownjava.com</title>
</head>
<body>
<!-- taglib directive example -->
<c:out value="output from c out tag"/>
</body>
</html>

How to run the sample programs

Take a quiz on JSP directives here