Question

I want to use JSP page to return dynamic xml.The problem I’m facing is that I’ve model where some values are null and when they are null I don’t wont to display them. So I can do following:

if(ampApInfo.getColourcd().equals(null)){   %>

    <ColourCd><%=  ampApInfo.getColourcd() %></ColourCd>

  <%} else if(ampApInfo.getSzWeightColourcd().equals(null)){ %> 


    <SzWeightColourcd><%= ampApInfo.getSzWeightColourcd()  %></SzWeightColourcd>

  <%}%> //and so forth

But this makes my code ugly and not practical. Is there a way to avoid that??
Can you please provide me with an example how to do it or point to one.
Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

The ugliness is caused by using old fashioned scriptlets instead of JSTL/EL. With JSTL, it would look more self-documenting (as it uses XML-like markup). With EL you can use the ${} notation to access bean properties.

Something like this:

<c:choose>
    <c:when test="${not empty ampApInfo.colourcd}">
        <ColourCd>${ampApInfo.colourcd}</ColourCd>
    </c:when>
    <c:when test="${not empty ampApInfo.szWeightColourcd}">
        <ColourCd>${ampApInfo.szWeightColourcd}</ColourCd>
    </c:when>
    <c:otherwise />
</c:choose>

(note that I inversed the condition, you were printing the elements when the value is null, which contradicts your own functional requirement)

See also:

• How to avoid Java code in JSP files?