[STR-2941] Provide access to important Struts variables and constants so they could be easily used with JSTL

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Open
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Fix Version/s: Future
• Component/s: Core, Tag Libraries
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Michael Jouravlev
• Created: 30/Aug/06 01:11
• Updated: 15/Nov/07 06:17

Description

Struts taglib has many tags that encapsulate Struts/servlet constants/variables and expand them into plain HTML tags. As an example, take a look at <html:base> tag.

Consider the "home.jsp" page is located in directory "pages". Let us also consider that application context is defined as "myapp".

An <html:base> tag specified in home.jsp page will generate something like this:
<base href="http://myserver:8080/myapp/pages/home.jsp">
A suggested alternative to <html:base> tag would look like:
<base href="${pageroot}">

Another example, <html:link>.

Instead of
<html:link action="/myAction">My Action</html:link>
one would use
<a href="${contextroot}/myAction">My Action</a>

The benefits:

• Tag library can be simplified
• No need to support proper HTML attributes for different tags; why Struts should care whether HTML developed by a programmer is valid or not?
• The markup looks more like real HTML
• HTML editing software will not choke on custom tags
• No hidden meaning, no side effects, just plain old HTML.

Issue Links

• relates to: STR-2197 [taglib] new tag to handle relation (html <link>)