JSP and Tag Libraries for Web Development

PotPieMan writes "I recently finished reading JSP and Tag Libraries for Web Development, a book for JSP developers wanting to improve their skillset. Read on for my review." It's not a new book, but still relevant. JSP and Tag Libraries for Web Development author Wellington L.S. da Silva pages 420, including appendices publisher New Riders rating 6 reviewer PotPieMan ISBN 0735710953 summary A guide to designing and implementing JSP applications, with a focus on tag libraries.

The Scoop Web developers and designers have long wrestled with strategies for combining their efforts. Web developers don't mind looking at code but dislike dealing with the look of a page, while Web designers are the opposite. Dynamic Web page technologies, such as Microsoft's ASP, Perl's many template systems and Web frameworks (Text::Template, HTML::Template, HTML::Mason, CGI::Application, etc.), and PHP, were designed to give both developers and designers a chance to do their work without stepping on each other's toes.

Sun's answer was to release the Servlet API and later extend that to make JavaServer Pages. Initially, there was no clear role separation for servlets and JSPs, since a servlet could generate and display HTML just as easily as a JSP could perform business logic. The Model 2 architecture, based on Smalltalk's Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern, showed that servlets and JSPs complemented each other. Tag libraries extended the functionality of JSPs in a way that made it easier for developers and designers to collaborate.

JSP and Tag Libraries for Web Development is mostly targeted at Web developers who want advice on designing JSP applications and incorporating tag libraries. The book covers custom tag libraries, the Jakarta Struts framework, and various commercial and noncommercial tag libraries, such as Jakarta Taglibs.

What's to Like? The author starts with an introduction to servlets and JSPs, including a decent explanation of MVC. If you are comfortable with servlets and JSPs, this discussion is really more of a review than anything else.

The next two chapters introduce tag libraries and the author's example application (a simple article and author tracking system). The author illustrates the lifecycle of a tag, which helps if you haven't really used or written custom tags before. Da Silva also gives a very detailed discussion of tag library descriptors (TLDs). Some details might have been better left as an appendix, but it is nice to see such a comprehensive explanation of what you can put in a TLD.

Da Silva then spends about 100 pages on writing simple tags, iteration tags, body tags, and making all of these types of tags cooperate. The discussion is again very detailed, but seems unfocused in many parts. Very little of the code in these chapters ties in with his example application.

Next, the author spends three chapters on the Jakarta Struts framework. He explains how Struts naturally fits into the MVC design pattern and gives various examples of how to structure your Struts application. He also includes an entire chapter on finishing his example application, going over Struts ActionForms, Struts Actions (including a method to prevent double submission that I had not seen before), and Struts' method of internationalization on JSPs.

Finally, the author runs through the Jakarta Taglibs project and some commercial tag libraries. Brief examples are provided, but this chapter really needed more attention than da Silva gave it.

What's to Consider Overall, JSP and Tag Libraries for Web Development feels unfocused. The author's central points are explained well in many places, but lost in many others. With some reorganization, I think the book could make a much stronger case for appropriate uses of tag libraries, both application-specific and general (e.g. Struts and Taglibs).

Sections where general tag libraries are discussed read very much like the documentation available on project Web sites, such as the struts-html tag library documentation. These really should have been left as an appendix, with better explanations and usage examples provided in their place.

I was also very disappointed in the author's use of Struts Action classes. He combined various actions (add, edit, delete, etc.) to perform on a specific object and tested for a URL parameter to decide what to do. In my opinion, each action should be encapsulated in one Action class (AddObjectAction, EditObjectAction, and DeleteObjectAction). The author's design leads to URL hackery which Struts tries to avoid.

Recently, Struts released a stable version of the 1.1 series, which this book does not cover (it was published in early 2002). Readers should be familiar with the Struts documentation for this release before picking up this book.

The book's Web site is under construction, and I've been able to find little information on the publisher's site.

The Summary A okay book with room for improvement. While the author shows his technical knowledge, the book loses its direction in places. Most developers can probably get by with the documentation available on the Web. Table of Contents

1. Understanding the Tag Library Extension API
2. 1. Introduction to Servlets and JavaServer Pages
   2. Introduction to Tag Libraries
   3. Writing Custom Tags
   4. Cooperating Tags and Validation
   5. Design Considerations
3. The Struts Framework
4. 1. The Jakarta Struts Project
   2. Struts Tag Libraries
   3. Anatomy of a Struts Application
5. The Jakarta Taglibs and Other Resources
   1. The Jakarta Taglibs Project
   2. Commercial Tag Libraries
   3. Other Resources
6. Appendices
7. 1. Tomcat
   2. Allaire JRun
   3. Orion
   4. MySQL
   5. Mapping Servlet-JSP Objects
   6. The Apache Software License, Version 1.1

You can purchase the JSP and Tag Libraries for Web Development from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Re:Humor lost on Mods again

[sulli]

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[Trolling4Dollars]

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