Expressions

Expressions

Scriptlets allow you to insert Java code into your HTML. Expressions are a simple way to output values to
HTML. Below, an expression is added to hello.jsp to print out the value of i.

<html>
<body>
     <%
     for (int i =0; i < 10; i++) {
     %>
     <h1>Hello, JSP World <%=i%></h1>
     <%
     }
     %>
</body>
</html>

The expression starts with a <%= and ends with %> or <jsp:expression> and </jsp:expression>. The code
put in an expression gets put inside of a write or print statement of the _jspService() method in generated
servlet.

for (int i =0; i < 10; i++) {

   out.write("\n");
   out.write("        <h1>Hello, JSP World ");
   out.print(i);
   out.write("</h1>\n");
   out.write("        ");
}

A common mistake is to add a semicolon (;) to an expression.

<h1>Hello, JSP World <%=i;%></h1>

The code above cannot be compiled by the JSP engine. An expression is not comprised of complete Java
statement as scriptlets are. The compiler would try to take this statement and put it inside of a print
statement resulting in the following syntactically incorrect code.

for (int i =0; i < 10; i++) {

   out.write("\n");
   out.write("        <h1>Hello, JSP World ");
   out.print(i;);
   out.write("</h1>\n");
   out.write("        ");
}

Expressions

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