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Introduction and Target Audiences:
Shawn Bayern had written this book with a specialized and modular approach in his mind. The book being modular in its design and specialized for targeting its various but selected intended readers throws a good stuff for the programmers. Reader can very well identify himself depending upon his prior knowledge of the subject and can easily start with the topics intended for him. This had become possible due to a clean modularity in the book’s contents. Overall it tries to make JSP, and web development in general, more accessible. JSTL in Action is not a book meant only for programmers rather it equally pleases the page authors also. Even people having a working knowledge of simple markup language can also gain from it. Taking the interest of page authors further the book gives them an added advantage to learn some more in-depth aspects about JSTL.
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Organization of book:
Organization of this book is one of its most important as well as catchy aspect. The way it serves the readers with its contents is worth to be noticed. It is different from other JSTL books as it does not tell you anything and everything of JSTL. Rather it tries to capture only the important and relevant topics on the subject. Book represents its contents in a good way by dividing them in four parts with each part being equally important for the reader. Although the initial parts of the book may not be of great help for advance Java programmers but definitely they won’t get disappointed by the rich technical treat served by the later parts. The book in this way displays a good combination for its diverse set of readers. Another aspect which will catch the user’s attention is its limited set of relevant examples. Author had prevented himself from listing unnecessary coding examples in the book. But alongside he had discussed some really helpful code samples in the book.
Book starts with part one focusing on some of the technologies that serve as a foundation to Jstl. Not going into deep the author effectively gives a brief overview of web browser’s environment in order to make the readers comfortable with the further topics coming in the book. Taking the introductory session further book extensively speaks regarding the JSTL’s role in web applications, requirements for running JSTL etc. Next the book describes the importance of XML and JSP in understanding the Jstl features. Different tags of JSP along with its scoped variables had been discussed in the later part of the second chapter. Here the author gives the advanced readers an option to conditionally skip out the first part as he had raised some very basic and general points in this section.
Second Part of the book talks about JSTL’s expression language, conditions, and loops along with some database access features, text importing and formatting details. Author had gone into a much details while explaining the JSTL’s expression language syntax. This enables the reader to take advantage of the rich literature written by the author regarding the same. It starts with taking care of the accessing procedure and storing of scope variables and moves on to printing of dynamic content and production and reading of HTML forms. Chapter four and five gives a detailed overview of some of the flow controlling aspects. Reader gets benefited by some useful discussion on simple as well as mutually exclusive conditions, Jstl’s conditional tags, parsing of strings and flow control with loops.
This book seems to be a classic creation on JSTL if one compares it with other literature available in the market. Its easy and attractive presentation keeps the interest of readers alive in the book. While chapter six talks about text importing issues the next two chapters are devoted for XML fragments. The text importing aspect had been extensively discussed in the book. Here author properly takes care of issues like data retrieval from URLs, header-footer creation, redirecting users to new pages etc. There is a good treat for the readers when it comes to XML fragments. Book spends sufficiently good time with the XML Path Language. XPath’s vision, its syntax, its significance in JSTL etc had been taken care of. Moreover working with XML fragments had also been talked about.
Chapter nine and ten throws light on JSTL’s database support and formatting issues. Author had clearly stated the need and methods as to how programmers can tap the various database supporting aspects of JSTLs .While discussing this author had tried to raise all the important database related issues which one can need while building his application. Book also mentions some formatting aspects needed in JSTL. Printing and parsing of numbers and dates, overriding of Time zones and locales as well as internationalization of text messages had been taken care of.
Part three serves the readers with more complete and integrated examples of JSTL. While chapter eleven deals with some common tasks which a user can perform with JSTL chapter twelve revolves around some of the dynamic features for websites. Readers get to know some of the common tasks like reading check boxes and dates from HTML, forms validation and error handling etc. in an effective way. Chapter thirteen is meant for giving its readers a hands-on experience on building a website of their own. It tackles issues right from designing a reusable layout to adding dynamic content to the website. This chapter shuts up all those mouths complaining for lack of practical coding examples in the book.
Last part of the book discusses how to configure JSTL, integrate Java code, and write custom tags using JSTL’s API. The concluding two chapters relates to some performance issues as well as JSTLs usage for custom tag development. Readers can find some fine tuning aspects of JSTL’s behavior and performance. The book concludes with issues like development of custom tags which gives the readers an added advantage to mould the tags in a manner best suited for his needs.
Finally
Readers interested in seeing more coding examples may initially get disappointed by this book as it unnecessarily does not flood its pages with them. But one can easily notice the effort put in by the author in developing a well knitted combination of theory as well as relevant coding examples. People who want to get instant but complete knowledge on JSTL will find this book as a great help. The book proves its worth for people who are in need to start the development process early. Overall it is an excellent work by Shawn Bayern and a treat for the readers. I would rather recommend this book to all the aspiring JSTL programmers. A must-have in every Java programmers’ book-shelf.
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