I'm using Tomcat 4.1.24-LE-jdk14, and have written a simple taglib by extending the TagSupport class. It basically works, but the lifecycle is being handled differently than I expected. My tag has no body, and has one required attribute. My JSP page contains several invocations, all with different values for the attribute. I expected setPageContext() to be called once, followed by a bunch of doStartTag() / doEndTag() calls, followed by one release() call. Instead, setPageContext() is being called for each invocation of my tag (followed by doStartTag() and doEndTag()). My release() method is *never* called.
I'm basing my expectations on the JSP 1.2 spec, esp pp. 163-164, and the discussion about "Tag handler life cycle and instance reuse" at http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2001/11/07/jsp12.html?page=2. The two issues in my mind are: (a) Is this working according to spec? Perhaps I misunderstood how it's supposed to work. and (b) Could this be done more efficiently? Replacing several scriptlet method calls with a taglib caused the JSP's class file to double in size. The code that's being generated for the JSP includes a bunch of private methods that look like this: private boolean _jspx_meth_xlate_get_61(javax.servlet.jsp.PageContext pageContext) throws Throwable { JspWriter out = pageContext.getOut(); /* ---- xlate:get ---- */ com.eloquent.ecs.tags.xlate.EXlateTagGet _jspx_th_xlate_get_61 = (com.eloquent.ecs.tags.xlate.EXlateTagGet) _jspx_tagPool_xlate_get_key.get(com.eloquent.ecs.tags.xlate.EXlateTagGet.cla ss); _jspx_th_xlate_get_61.setPageContext(pageContext); _jspx_th_xlate_get_61.setParent(null); _jspx_th_xlate_get_61.setKey("jsp.edownloadplayer.File"); int _jspx_eval_xlate_get_61 = _jspx_th_xlate_get_61.doStartTag(); if (_jspx_th_xlate_get_61.doEndTag() == javax.servlet.jsp.tagext.Tag.SKIP_PAGE) return true; _jspx_tagPool_xlate_get_key.reuse(_jspx_th_xlate_get_61); return false; } Thanks for any insights you can provide. Daniel Rabe Eloquent, Inc.
