Dinesh on Java

Categories: JSTL

JSTL forTokens Tag <forTokens>

JSTL forTokens tag is used to iterate over the tokens separated by delimiters. JSTL forTokens tag is another tag in core JSTL library to support Iteration or looping. It effectively complements, more useful <c:forEach> tag, by allowing you to iterate over comma separated or any delimited String. You can use this tag to split string in JSP and can operate on them individually. forTokens tag has similar attribute like forEach JSTL tag except one more attribute called delims, which specifies delimiter.

JSTL <c:forTokens> tag Example:

To display the names on JSP, you can use the <forTokens> tag like:

<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" prefix="c" %>
<html>
<head>
<title><c:forTokens> Tag Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<c:forTokens items="Dinesh,Anamika,Sweety" delims="," var="name">
   <c:out value="${name}"/><p>
</c:forTokens>
</body>
</html>

As you can see above, in the JSTL forTokens tag, items attribute is used to define the tokens. It will iterate over tokens separated by delimiter. In each iteration, it will get a token defined with attribute var. status attribute keeps track of iteration.

Withing starting and ending tag of forTokens, you can display or apply other logic to each token.

Attributes of <c:forTokens> tag are:

Required Attributes:

1. items:This attribute provides string of tokens to iterate over..

2. delims: This attribute provides the set of delimiters. The characters that separate the tokens in the string.

Optional Attributes:

1. var: This attribute provides name of the exported scoped variable for the current item of the iteration. This scoped variable has nested visiblity. Its type depends on the object of the underlying collection.

2. varStatus: This attribute provides name of the exported scoped variable for the status of the iteration. Object exported is of type javax.servlet.jsp.jstl.core.LoopTagStatus. This scoped variable has nested visibility.

3. begin: If items specified: Iteration begins at the item located at the specified index. First item of the collection has index 0. If items not specified: Iteration begins with index set at the value specified.

4. end: If items specified: Iteration ends at the item located at the specified index (inclusive). If items not specified: Iteration ends when index reaches the value specified.

5. step: Iteration will only process every step items of the collection, starting with the first one.

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Dinesh Rajput

Dinesh Rajput is the chief editor of a website Dineshonjava, a technical blog dedicated to the Spring and Java technologies. It has a series of articles related to Java technologies. Dinesh has been a Spring enthusiast since 2008 and is a Pivotal Certified Spring Professional, an author of a book Spring 5 Design Pattern, and a blogger. He has more than 10 years of experience with different aspects of Spring and Java design and development. His core expertise lies in the latest version of Spring Framework, Spring Boot, Spring Security, creating REST APIs, Microservice Architecture, Reactive Pattern, Spring AOP, Design Patterns, Struts, Hibernate, Web Services, Spring Batch, Cassandra, MongoDB, and Web Application Design and Architecture. He is currently working as a technology manager at a leading product and web development company. He worked as a developer and tech lead at the Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd and was the first developer in his previous company, Paytm. Dinesh is passionate about the latest Java technologies and loves to write technical blogs related to it. He is a very active member of the Java and Spring community on different forums. When it comes to the Spring Framework and Java, Dinesh tops the list!