Include Directive in JSP is an instruction from JSP to JSP Engine about including static file at Translation Time.
The include directive is used to includes a file during the translation phase. This directive tells the container to merge the content of other external files with the current JSP during the translation phase. You may code include directives anywhere in your JSP page.
General syntex of JSP Include Directives generally look like this:
Syntex:
<%@ include file="xyz" %>
Example:
<%@ include file="/jsp/header.jsp" %>
Explanation: As shown above, include directive has only one attributes file.
file Attribute: file attribute in Include Directive specifies the relative path of the included file. This file can be any html, text or jsp file. Please be aware that included file may have html, head, title or any other tag that can create conflict with current JSP.
Once the file is added statically, next line in current JSP will be processed.
A good example of include directive is including a common header and footer with multiple pages of content.
Let us define following three files
(a) header.jps
(b) footer.jsp and
(c) index.jsp
Following is the content of header.jsp:
<%!
int pageCount = 0;
void addCount() {
pageCount++;
}
%>
<% addCount(); %>
<html>
<head>
<title>The include Directive Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<center>
<h2>The include Directive Example</h2>
<p>This site has been visited <%= pageCount %> times.</p>
</center>
<br/><br/>
footer.jsp
<br/><br/> <center> <p>Copyright © 2013 www.dineshonjava.com</p> </center> </body> </html>
index.jsp
<%@ include file="header.jsp" %> <center> <p>Thanks for visiting my page.</p> </center> <%@ include file="footer.jsp" %>
Now these three files copied to following folder and restart server.
C:Program Files (x86)Apache Software FoundationTomcat 7.0webappsindex
Hit following url:
http://localhost:8080/index/index.jsp
