dynamically build html input textbox similar to ST

Question

Can a custom tag be utilized to clean up this form input element?

<input name="action_for" type="text" value="<c:if test="${empty commitmentItem.action_for}">
<c:out value="${param.action_for}" escapeXml='false' /></c:if>
<c:if test="${not empty commitmentItem.action_for}">
<c:out value="${commitmentItem.action_for}" /></c:if>"
size="16" maxlength="16" />

I'd like to just type:

<myTag:input field="action_for" obj="commitmentItem" />

or something similar.

I just don't know how to access the request and also the bean data from within the tag handler class for the value attribute

I could figure out how to do a simple tag for generating a link to the javascript POP-Up widget.

<myTag:calPOP field="ecd_date" /> 

which generates this link:

<A HREF="javascript:cal1xx.select(document.forms[0].ecd_date,'ecd_date_anchor','MM/dd/yyyy');" 
TITLE="Click to Select a Date" NAME="ecd_date_anchor" ID="ecd_date_anchor"> CALENDAR</A>

... here is a bit of the tag handler for that...

public int doStartTag() throws JspException {

    try {
        JspWriter out = pc.getOut();
        out.println("&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=\"javascript:cal1xx.select(document.forms[0]."
            + field
            + ",'"
            + field
            + "_anchor','MM/dd/yyyy');\" TITLE=\"Click to Select a Date\" NAME=\""
            + field
            + "_anchor\" ID=\""
            + field
            + "_anchor\">CALENDAR</a>");

    }
    catch (IOException e) {
        throw new JspTagException("An IOException occurred.");
    }
    return EVAL_BODY_AGAIN;
}

I am not using STRUTS and can not utilize EL