Let Beginning JSP 2 be your guide as you begin using JSP. This comprehensive guide starts by steering you through your first JSP application. It reviews HTML, and provides you with a useful overview of JSP. You’ll then be ready to start learning one of the core techniques in JSP: pulling data from a database and working with that data.
When you’ve mastered this technique, you’ll be ready to branch out powerfully into other JSP topics: variables, scope, flow control, and code reuse for productive time management. Finally, the book shows you how you can use JSP with XML and gives you a taste of some advanced topics, including using Struts and the Model View Controller.
This book’s step-by-step examples explain the techniques behind the code. The authors include realistic scenarios wherever possible to build your knowledge and confidence in JSP. After reading this book, you’ll have the knowledge and skills to enter the web development and Java development industries. All you need to begin this journey is a basic understanding of HTML and Java.
EXTENSIBLE MARKUP LANGUAGE (XML) has become the de facto standard for data interchange on the Internet these days. It has revolutionized the way the Web works by defining a standard for electronic exchange of information. It has done the same thing for data that Java did for code-it has made it portable.
What is XML, and why is it important? We’ll try and answer these and other questions you may have in this chapter, and we’ll show how you can use XML in your JavaServer Pages (JSP) applications.
Introducing XML
Before delving deeper into the guts of XML, you’ll examine the acronym XML itself. X, for Extensible, means you can extend the language to meet various requirements. ML, for Markup Language, means it’s a language for identifying structures within a document.
XML is extensible because it isn’t a fixed language. You can extend it to create your own languages in order to match your particular needs. In a way, XML isn’t really a language in itself; rather, it’s a standard for defining other languages to fit various computing scenarios, typically in the business or academic spheres.
A markup language is used to add meaning to different parts of a document. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is another type of markup language. Its tags give particular meaning to parts of a document. For instance, the <table> tag marks up a section to represent a table.
To clarify things further, you’ll look at some XML documents. The following is a file called web.xml used to configure Tomcat:
There are many other ways in which XML is quite different from HTML. XML isn’t limited to a preexisting set of tags, as HTML is, and although HTML is primarily concerned with describing how a document should be laid out in a browser, XML documents are more concerned with describing the data contained in a document, and they’re generally quite independent of how that data may be rendered for display.
Download Beginning JSP 2 (Using JSP and XML Together)
When you’ve mastered this technique, you’ll be ready to branch out powerfully into other JSP topics: variables, scope, flow control, and code reuse for productive time management. Finally, the book shows you how you can use JSP with XML and gives you a taste of some advanced topics, including using Struts and the Model View Controller.
This book’s step-by-step examples explain the techniques behind the code. The authors include realistic scenarios wherever possible to build your knowledge and confidence in JSP. After reading this book, you’ll have the knowledge and skills to enter the web development and Java development industries. All you need to begin this journey is a basic understanding of HTML and Java.
EXTENSIBLE MARKUP LANGUAGE (XML) has become the de facto standard for data interchange on the Internet these days. It has revolutionized the way the Web works by defining a standard for electronic exchange of information. It has done the same thing for data that Java did for code-it has made it portable.
What is XML, and why is it important? We’ll try and answer these and other questions you may have in this chapter, and we’ll show how you can use XML in your JavaServer Pages (JSP) applications.
Introducing XML
Before delving deeper into the guts of XML, you’ll examine the acronym XML itself. X, for Extensible, means you can extend the language to meet various requirements. ML, for Markup Language, means it’s a language for identifying structures within a document.
XML is extensible because it isn’t a fixed language. You can extend it to create your own languages in order to match your particular needs. In a way, XML isn’t really a language in itself; rather, it’s a standard for defining other languages to fit various computing scenarios, typically in the business or academic spheres.
A markup language is used to add meaning to different parts of a document. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is another type of markup language. Its tags give particular meaning to parts of a document. For instance, the <table> tag marks up a section to represent a table.
To clarify things further, you’ll look at some XML documents. The following is a file called web.xml used to configure Tomcat:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee
<html> <head><title>A date formatting form</title></head> <body> <formIn many ways, XML is similar to HTML. Both these markup languages use tags to enclose items with particular meaning; these tags are enclosed within angle brackets, as in <table>, <web-app>, <html>, and so on. Also, there will be a corresponding closing tag that has the same name but starts with </. These closing tags mark the end of the item referred to by the tag, and in XML, the whole section including the start tag and the end tag is known as an element. Note that although many HTML elements don’t require a closing tag (such as <p> and <br>), XML elements must always have a start and an end tag. Both HTML and XML allow elements to be contained, or nested, within each other, as you can see from the previous examples (the <tr> element is nested within the <table> element because it appears after the <table> start tag and before the </table> end tag). However, XML is much stricter than HTML in this regard because it doesn’t allow elements to overlap (that is, if an element’s start tag appears after another’s start tag, the nested element’s end tag must appear before the other’s end tag).
There are many other ways in which XML is quite different from HTML. XML isn’t limited to a preexisting set of tags, as HTML is, and although HTML is primarily concerned with describing how a document should be laid out in a browser, XML documents are more concerned with describing the data contained in a document, and they’re generally quite independent of how that data may be rendered for display.
Download Beginning JSP 2 (Using JSP and XML Together)
