What's the Deal with java tags in JSP and JHTML Pages?

Note: The information in this article is for Dynamo 5.1 only

Example Code

Let's look at an example. The server code below uses both <java> and <% %> tags, we can save the same page with both a .jsp and .jhtml extension and get different results

<HTML> <HEAD>
<TITLE>Java Server Page</TITLE>
</HEAD>

<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF">
<H1>Java Server Page</H1>

<% 
   int iJavaTag=0;
   int iJSPTag=0; 
%>
  
<java>
  iJavaTag++;
</java>

<% 
  iJSPTag++;
%>

<% out.println("<br>Test JSP <java> tag: " + iJavaTag); %>
<% out.println("<br>Test JSP < %  % > tag: " + iJSPTag); %>

</BODY> </HTML>

As a JHTML Page

You can effectively use the jsp tags <% and %> in a JHTML page for java code, the result of firing up our java_server_page.jhtml page is as follows:

<H1>Java Server Page</H1>
<BR>Test JSP <JAVA>tag: 1 
<BR>Test JSP < % % > tag: 1

We see that both the <% %> and <java> tag delimited code is part of the page servlet

As a JSP Page

You cannot effectively use the jhtml tags <java> in a JSP page for java code, the result of firing up our java_server_page.jsp page is as follows:

<H1>Java Server Page</H1>
<JAVA>iJavaTag++; </JAVA>
<BR>Test JSP <JAVA>tag: 0 
<BR>Test JSP < % % > tag: 1

We see that the <java> tags are not processed on the server and are passed down untouched to the client. This is because these tags are not a part of the JSP specification.

Summary

Files ending in .JHTML are processed with the JHTML tags enabled as a superset of the JSP standard.

This means:

You can save JSP pages as .jhtml files and they will work fine
JHTML tags are not processed on the server for .jsp files

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