Question

is it possible to create a custom JSTL tag that accepts a non-string attribute?

I would like to create a tag that would be handle pagination using PagedListHolder from Spring MVC.

<%@tag body-content="scriptless" description="basic page template" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>

<%-- The list of normal or fragment attributes can be specified here: --%>
<%@attribute name="pagedList" required="true" %>

<%-- any content can be specified here e.g.: --%>
<%@taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core"%>

<c:choose>
    <c:when test="${!pagedList.firstPage}">
        <a href="
           <c:url value="pagedList">
               <c:param name="page" value="${pagedList.page - 1}"/>
           </c:url>
           ">&lt;&lt;
        </a>
    </c:when>
    <c:otherwise>
        &lt;&lt;
    </c:otherwise>
</c:choose>

<%-- ...more --%>

This tag would require an instance of PagedListHolder class.

Sort of like this, but I realize this is not valid.

<templ:pagedList pagedList="${players}"/>

Do I need to write a tag handler to achieve this?

Answer 1

You can just specify the type attribute on the attribute directive.

<%@ attribute name="pagedList" required="true" type="org.springframework.beans.support.PagedListHolder" %>