Expression Language

 What is EL?
The JSP Expression Language(EL) is
simple, special purpose language
designed for the web application
environment. EL was originally
developed in connection with JSP
standard Tag Library but not it has
been incorporated in JSP 2.0.
 EL Syntax
${expression}

Whatever is inside the curly braces

is evaluated at runtime and sent to
the JSO output stream in place of
${}. You can use an expression as
the entire value of an attribute.
 Literals and Variables
 boolean ${true} and ${false}
 integers ${68412}
 floating point numbers with a decimal
point ${3.141}
 string enclosed either with quotation
marks ${“hello”}
 The null value ${null}
 Implicit objects
 pageContext
 pageScope
 requestScope
 sessionScope
 applicationScope
 Param
 paramValues
 header
 headerValues
 cookie
 Extracting property values
${beanName.propertyName}
or
${beanName[“propertyName”]}
 Arithmetic Operators
 Addition ${a+b}
 Subtraction ${a-b}
 Multiplication ${a*b}
 Division ${a/b}
 Modulo ${a%b}
 Relational Operators
 >,<,>=,<=,!=
 Greater than gt
 Less than lt
 Equals eq
 Greater than or equals ge
 Less than or equals
 Not equals
 Logical operators
 && (and)
 || (or)
 ! (not)
 Empty
 It will check whether object is empty
or not

 ${empty obj}
 Function implementation class
 Like custom tags functions are
implemented in java classes and
registered in TLD.
 The implementation function must be
public static method.
public class currency
{
public static double convert(double amount, String
fromcurrency, String tocurrency)
{
return amount * 1.44;
}
}
 Registering the function
 In order to make the function
available to a web application through
EL, we need to register it in Tag
Library Descriptor(TLD)
 Element used to register functions
 <function>
 <name>
 <function-class>
 <function-signature>