How to reference constants in EL?

Question

How do you reference an constants with EL on a JSP page?

I have an interface Addresses with a constant named URL. I know I can reference it with a scriplet by going: <%=Addresses.URL%>, but how do I do this using EL?

Answer 1

You usually place these kinds of constants in a Configuration object (which has getters and setters) in the servlet context, and access them with ${applicationScope.config.url}

Answer 2

The following does not apply to EL in general, but instead to SpEL (Spring EL) only (tested with 3.2.2.RELEASE on Tomcat 7). I think it is worth mentioning it here in case someone searches for JSP and EL (but uses JSP with Spring).

<%@ taglib prefix="spring" uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags"%>
<spring:eval var="constant" expression="T(com.example.Constants).CONSTANT"/>

Answer 3

There is a workaround that is not exactly what you want, but lets you active almost the same with touching scriptlets in a quite minimal way. You can use scriptlet to put value into a JSTL variable and use clean JSTL code later in the page.

<%@ taglib prefix="c"       uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>
<%@ page import="com.whichever.namespace.Addresses" %>
<c:set var="ourUrl" value="<%=Addresses.URL%>"/>
<c:if test='${"http://www.google.com" eq ourUrl}'>
   Google is our URL!
</c:if>

Answer 4

Yes, you can. You need a custom tag (if you can't find it somewhere else). I've done this:

package something;

import java.lang.reflect.Field;
import java.lang.reflect.Modifier;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.TreeMap;

import javax.servlet.jsp.JspException;
import javax.servlet.jsp.tagext.TagSupport;

import org.apache.taglibs.standard.tag.el.core.ExpressionUtil;

/**
 * Get all class constants (statics) and place into Map so they can be accessed
 * from EL.
 * @author Tim.sabin
 */
public class ConstMapTag extends TagSupport {
    public static final long serialVersionUID = 0x2ed23c0f306L;

    private String path = "";
    private String var = "";

    public void setPath (String path) throws JspException {
        this.path = (String)ExpressionUtil.evalNotNull ("constMap", "path",
          path, String.class, this, pageContext);
    }

    public void setVar (String var) throws JspException {
        this.var = (String)ExpressionUtil.evalNotNull ("constMap", "var",
          var, String.class, this, pageContext);
    }

    public int doStartTag () throws JspException {
        // Use Reflection to look up the desired field.
        try {
            Class<?> clazz = null;
            try {
                clazz = Class.forName (path);
            } catch (ClassNotFoundException ex) {
                throw new JspException ("Class " + path + " not found.");
            }
            Field [] flds = clazz.getDeclaredFields ();
            // Go through all the fields, and put static ones in a Map.
            Map<String, Object> constMap = new TreeMap<String, Object> ();
            for (int i = 0; i < flds.length; i++) {
                // Check to see if this is public static final. If not, it's not a constant.
                int mods = flds [i].getModifiers ();
                if (!Modifier.isFinal (mods) || !Modifier.isStatic (mods) ||
                  !Modifier.isPublic (mods)) {
                    continue;
                }
                Object val = null;
                try {
                    val = flds [i].get (null);    // null for static fields.
                } catch (Exception ex) {
                    System.out.println ("Problem getting value of " + flds [i].getName ());
                    continue;
                }
                // flds [i].get () automatically wraps primitives.
                // Place the constant into the Map.
                constMap.put (flds [i].getName (), val);
            }
            // Export the Map as a Page variable.
            pageContext.setAttribute (var, constMap);
        } catch (Exception ex) {
            if (!(ex instanceof JspException)) {
                throw new JspException ("Could not process constants from class " + path);
            } else {
                throw (JspException)ex;
            }
        }
        return SKIP_BODY;
    }
}

and the tag is called:

<yourLib:constMap path="path.to.your.constantClass" var="consts" />

All public static final variables will be put into a Map indexed by their Java name, so if

public static final int MY_FIFTEEN = 15;

then the tag will wrap this in an Integer and you can reference it in a JSP:

<c:if test="${consts['MY_FIFTEEN'] eq 15}">

and you don't have to write getters!

Answer 5

I'm defining a constant in my jsp right at the beginning:

<%final String URI = "http://www.example.com/";%>

I include the core taglib in my JSP:

<%@taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core"%>

Then, I make the constant available to EL by following statement:

<c:set var="URI" value="<%=URI%>"></c:set>

Now, I can use it later. Here an example, where the value is just written as HTML comment for debugging purposes:

<!-- ${URI} -->

---

With your constant class, you can just import your class and assign the constants to local variables. I know that my answer is a sort of quick hack, but the question also bumps up when one wants to define constants directly in the JSP.

Answer 6

EL 3.0 or newer

If you're already on Java EE 7 / EL 3.0, then the @page import will also import class constants in EL scope.

<%@ page import="com.example.YourConstants" %>

This will under the covers be imported via ImportHandler#importClass() and be available as ${YourConstants.FOO}.

Note that all java.lang.* classes are already implicitly imported and available like so ${Boolean.TRUE} and ${Integer.MAX_VALUE}. This only requires a more recent Java EE 7 container server as early versions had bugs in this. E.g. GlassFish 4.0 and Tomcat 8.0.0-1x fails, but GlassFish 4.1+ and Tomcat 8.0.2x+ works. And you need to make absolutely sure that your web.xml is declared conform the latest servlet version supported by the server. Thus with a web.xml which is declared conform Servlet 2.5 or older, none of the Servlet 3.0+ features will work.

Also note that this facility is only available in JSP and not in Facelets. In case of JSF+Facelets, your best bet is using OmniFaces <o:importConstants> as below:

<o:importConstants type="com.example.YourConstants" />

Or adding an EL context listener which calls ImportHandler#importClass() as below:

@ManagedBean(eager=true)
@ApplicationScoped
public class Config {

    @PostConstruct
    public void init() {
        FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getApplication().addELContextListener(new ELContextListener() {
            @Override
            public void contextCreated(ELContextEvent event) {
                event.getELContext().getImportHandler().importClass("com.example.YourConstants");
            }
        });
    }

}

---

EL 2.2 or older

This is not possible in EL 2.2 and older. There are several alternatives:

1. Put them in a Map<String, Object> which you put in the application scope. In EL, map values are accessible the usual Javabean way by ${map.key} or ${map['key.with.dots']}.

2. Use <un:useConstants> of the Unstandard taglib (maven2 repo here):

   <%@ taglib uri="http://jakarta.apache.org/taglibs/unstandard-1.0" prefix="un" %>
   <un:useConstants className="com.example.YourConstants" var="constants" />
   

   This way they are accessible the usual Javabean way by ${constants.FOO}.

3. Use Javaranch's CCC <ccc:constantsMap> as desribed somewhere at the bottom of this article.

   <%@ taglib uri="http://bibeault.org/tld/ccc" prefix="ccc" %>
   <ccc:constantsMap className="com.example.YourConstants" var="constants" />
   

   This way they are accessible the usual Javabean way by ${constants.FOO} as well.

4. If you're using JSF2, then you could use <o:importConstants> of OmniFaces.

   <html ... xmlns:o="http://omnifaces.org/ui">
   <o:importConstants type="com.example.YourConstants" />
   

   This way they are accessible the usual Javabean way by #{YourConstants.FOO} as well.

5. Create a wrapper class which returns them through Javabean-style getter methods.

6. Create a custom EL resolver which first scans the presence of a constant and if absent, then delegate to the default resolver, otherwise returns the constant value instead.