Downloading JSTL

In this tutorial we are going to use Tomcat Version (apache-tomcat-5.5.17), 

If you are using older version of Tomcat (say Tomcat 4.1) then follow the following steps to use JSTL in your program.

Different installation procedure has to be followed for Tomcat 4.x and Tomcat 5.x Containers. To use JSTL two files jstl.jar and standart.jar are required to be placed into WEB-INF/lib directory of the web application. Each web application must have this file. With Tomcat 5.0 these files can be copied from the examples folder webapps/jsp-examples/WEB-INF/lib/ folder.

JSTL Installation on Tomcat 4.1

This differs from Tomcat 5.0.x installation, as the tld files have to be copied in application folder at a particular location and entries for these

1. Download the JSTL archive (binaries not source) from the Jakarta Website. Unzip/untar the file.
2. Copy the jar files you've extracted to common/lib in your Tomcat installation (although you won't need all the jar files for our project). This makes the JSTL jar files available to any of your Web applications.
3. For any Web application for which you want to use JSTL, copy the .tld files to the WEB-INF directory in your Web application.
4. For your JSTL Web application, edit your web.xml file and add the following entries:

<taglib>
    <taglib-uri>http://java.sun.com/jstl/fmt</taglib-uri>
    <taglib-location>/WEB-INF/fmt.tld</taglib-location>
  </taglib>
  <taglib>
    <taglib-uri>http://java.sun.com/jstl/core</taglib-uri>
    <taglib-location>/WEB-INF/c.tld</taglib-location>
  </taglib>
  <taglib>
    <taglib-uri>http://java.sun.com/jstl/sql</taglib-uri>
    <taglib-location>/WEB-INF/sql.tld</taglib-location>
  </taglib>
  <taglib>
    <taglib-uri>http://java.sun.com/jstl/x</taglib-uri>
    <taglib-location>/WEB-INF/x.tld</taglib-location>
  </taglib>

There are two versions of JSTL, each with their own URI.

For JSP1.2 Containers: (e.g. Tomcat 4)
JSTL1.0: <%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/core" %>

For JSP2.0 Containers: (e.g. Tomcat 5)
JSTL1.1: <%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>


Make sure you have installed the right version for your server, and are using the correct uri.