JavaServer Pages: Developer's Handbook

I am a hard core Java Servlet guy. Never really had much desire for JSPs. To me Servlets was "real" programming and JSP's were for folks who didn't like Java programming. But after reading through this book I am beginning to like JSP's. It's a great quick reference for using JSP's with JavaBeans. It's a bummer there isn't any coverage of JavaServer Faces; that would have been an excellent addition to this book.

I gave 1 star to this book a few years ago, I'm reviewing JSP now and using 4 different books, I find in Nick and Mark's book the answers to questions or ambiguities raised in other books. I realize that my previous 1-star judgement was wrong because I was still a beginner in Java when I read this book, that made me have a limit understanding on this book. Now I reread and see things clearer. I would say that Nick and Mark would write in the forewords that before learning any J2EE technologies such as JSP, servlet ... the reader should have a solid Java knowledge. This book gives a good overview of all related technologies, but not enough to train someone to become operational. I did delete the 1 star review and redo the review with 4 stars.

I'm a seasoned ColdFusion and Java developer who wanted to learn JSP. I found this book to be fast moving, with many examples and solid explanations of the topics at hand. You'll find coverage on using JavaBeans, EJBs, and J2EE containers with JSP to prime you for books dedicated to each of those subjects, along with great explanation on when to use what, and how JSP fits into the J2EE framework. Chapters are around 30-40 pages each, with enough detail to get you started whilst wheting your appetite for your own experimentation on Tomcat. I read the book in less than 2 weeks and felt comfortable with all the material covered.I would not recommend this book to an inexperienced developer. There are a handful of minor code and example errors (such as an OS X screen shot for no reason!) which might confuse somebody new to Java and web development in general. Also, the coverage for configuring Tomcat, taglibs, etc. is probably not comprehensive enough for a newbie - you'll have to read the Jakarta docs to get some of the examples working. Of course, this is also a great way to learn how to configure the platform, since you're going to have to learn these things sooner or later anyway.If you are already in web development and need a fast paced, comprehensive resource for learning JSP, I recommend this book wholeheartedly. This is a great starting point for learning J2EE as a framework.

Quite comprehensive coverage of JSP2.0 especially JSTL. The book attempts to cover a lot of topics. Web applications, JNDI, XML,XSLT, JDBC and JSTL. Even a smattering of Struts and EJBs.One thing I liked about the book is the fact that everything is covered with an intent to portray the way a JSP utilizes these technologies. JSTL tag coverage is comprehensive. The authors keep coming back to the JSTL tags to show how they simplify matters and achieve the view and model separation.In short read this book if you want to :1. Learn all the Jsp directives.2. Familiarize yourself with the JSTL core, xml,sql and internationalization tags.3. Write your own JSP tags. The custom tags treatment can be improved but it does get the point across. 4. Acquire an understanding 'under the hood'. Generated servlets are listed and analyzed to give an idea to the user as to how the jsp code was processed by the servlet container. Tomcat 4.1 and a preview version of Tomcat that incorporates JSP 2.0 were used to demonstrate the book's material.