Question

var result = null;

function setSendButton(userInput){
   var clicked=userInput;
   result = "<%=mb.myMethod(clicked)%>";
}

where myMethod is a java method called through using jsp tags. it is defined as:

public boolean myMethod(String isClicked){
  if(isClicked.equals("true")){
     return true;
  }else{
     return false;
  }
}

for some reason stepping i got a JSP compilation error that compiles the code where var clicked value of “true” is not passed and clicked becomes a string during JSP compilation like so: mb.myMethod(clicked) instead of mb.myMethod("true")

Answer 1

It can’t work like that.
The Java code in JSP is translated and compiled on the server side before sending to the client’s browser. The javascript variable is available only after the JSP is translated and compiled to become a HTML file and sent to the client browser. At that time, The mb.myMethod is already already executed on the server side.

In short, you can passed java code to js assignment but not the other way around.