Summary

This chapter started down the exciting road of writing JSPs. The two phases of a JSP's existence were discussed: translation, where JSP code is turned into a Java servlet; and request, where the servlet is run to produce HTML. Two translation-time tags were introduced, the comment tag <%-- … --%>, which can include information for the page author that will not be seen by the user; and the include directive <%@include file="…"%>, which refers to another HTML or JSP page to include when building the servlet. The latter tag is useful for templating—that is, taking common elements of a site and moving them into separate files.

We have not even begun to scratch the surface of JSPs, so hold on if so far the effects they can produce seem less than thrilling. The next chapter will look at some of the things that can be done at request time, which is when the doorway to dynamic content opens wide.