Question

Should be direct HTML printing in a JSP declaration tag function legal?

<%! void recursivePaintLevels(List<String> things, int deepLevel){ %>
    <ul class="level-<%=deepLevel%>">   
         <% for (int i=0; i<things.size(); i++){ %>
             <li class="whatever">
                             //(...)
            </li>
         <% } %>
    </ul>
<% } %>

And then call it like this in normal JSP body flow:

 //(...)
 <% recursivePaintLevels(things, 1); %>

I mean would be like using same normal JSP logic of implicit out.println() but in a method.
For me it is not working (Eclipse says ‘Syntax error, insert “Finally” to complete TryStatement’) but I am not sure if my error has something to do with it.

I also know I should use JSLT and EL, but this is my choice.

Answer 1

I believe this is pretty much legal and valid though a bad practice.I think the problem here is because of the double quotes "level-<%=deepLevel%>"
Try separating that using

<% String str= "level-"+deepLevel; %>

and then use
<ul class="<%=str%>"> .

or simply replace the whole line with out.println

EDIT:

It appears that the body of the methods in jsp should not have any scriptlets. I have tried to embed one scriptlet with no content and observed that the generated java file adds the first part (from delcaration to the content before scriptlet )at the begging and the remaining part of the method at the end (and all member variables and other method declarations become part of this method). Apologies for providing wrong answer (as i have noticed that behavior with the cached jsp).

Looks like out.prinltn is the only solution for this problem