Question

I am truncating a string if it is beyond a certain length. I’m super new to jsp, so I’m doing it the only way I know how. I have a bit of javascript that will create a new var with the truncated string. I need to use this new displayTag string within the html. However, I realized I can’t use that var outside of the script tags. How can I achieve this?

 <script type="text/javascript">
    var displayTag = "${example.name}";
    if(displayTag.length > 15) {displayTag=displayTag.substring(0,15)+"..."};
    alert(displayTag); // for testing
 </script>

 <a href="some_link"><c:out value=displayTag/></a> // I know this line will not actually work

Answer 1

fn:substring and fn:length are probably what you’re after.

<%@ taglib prefix="fn" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/functions" %>

<c:choose>
   <c:when test="${fn:length(example.name) > 15}">
      ${fn:substring(example.name, 0, 15)}...
   </c:when>
   <c:otherwise>
      ${example.name}
   </c:otherwise>
</c:choose>