JSP XML Data Processing

When sending XML data over HTTP, it is necessary to use JSP to handle incoming and outgoing XML documents, such as RSS documents. As an XML document, it is just a pile of text; using JSP to create an XML document is no more difficult than creating an HTML document.

Using JSP to Send XML

Sending XML content with JSP is just like sending HTML content. The only difference is that you need to set the page's context attribute to text/xml. To set the context attribute, use the <%@page % > directive, like this:

<%@ page contentType="text/xml" %>

The following example sends XML content to the browser:

<%@ page contentType="text/xml" %>

<books>
   <book>
      <name>Padam History</name>
      <author>ZARA</author>
      <price>100</price>
   </book>
</books>

Use different browsers to access this example and see the document tree rendered by this example.

Processing XML in JSP

Before processing XML with JSP, you need to place the two library files related to XML and XPath in the <Tomcat Installation Directory>\lib directory:

books.xml file:

<books>
<book>
  <name>Padam History</name>
  <author>ZARA</author>
  <price>100</price>
</book>
<book>
  <name>Great Mistry</name>
  <author>NUHA</author>
  <price>2000</price>
</book>
</books>

main.jsp file:

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8"
    pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>
<%@ taglib prefix="x" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/xml" %>
 
<html>
<head>
  <title>JSTL x:parse Tags</title>
</head>
<body>
<h3>Books Info:</h3>
<c:import var="bookInfo" url="http://localhost:8080/books.xml"/>
 
<x:parse xml="${bookInfo}" var="output"/>
<b>The title of the first book is</b>: 
<x:out select="$output/books/book[1]/name" />
<br>
<b>The price of the second book</b>: 
<x:out select="$output/books/book[2]/price" />
 
</body>
</html>

Access http://localhost:8080/main.jsp, and the result is as follows:

BOOKS INFO:
The title of the first book is:Padam History 
The price of the second book: 2000

Using JSP to Format XML

This is the XSLT stylesheet file style.xsl:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl=
"http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
 
<xsl:output method="html" indent="yes"/>
 
<xsl:template match="/">
  <html>
  <body>
   <xsl:apply-templates/>
  </body>
  </html>
</xsl:template>
 
<xsl:template match="books">
  <table border="1" width="100%">
    <xsl:for-each select="book">
      <tr>
        <td>
          <i><xsl:value-of select="name"/></i>
        </td>
        <td>
          <xsl:value-of select="author"/>
        </td>
        <td>
          <xsl:value-of select="price"/>
        </td>
      </tr>
    </xsl:for-each>
  </table>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

This is the main.jsp file:

<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>
<%@ taglib prefix="x" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/xml" %>
 
<html>
<head>
  <title>JSTL x:transform Tags</title>
</head>
<body>
<h3>Books Info:</h3>
<c:set var="xmltext">
  <books>
    <book>
      <name>Padam History</name>
      <author>ZARA</author>
      <price>100</price>
    </book>
    <book>
      <name>Great Mistry</name>
      <author>NUHA</author>
      <price>2000</price>
    </book>
  </books>
</c:set>
 
<c:import url="http://localhost:8080/style.xsl" var="xslt"/>
<x:transform xml="${xmltext}" xslt="${xslt}"/>
 
</body>
</html>

The result is as follows:

For more information on processing XML with JSTL, please refer toJSP Standard Tag Library。

Other Extensions