displaytag

Basic table

    <% request.setAttribute( "test", new TestList(10, false) ); %>

    <display:table name="test" />

The simplest possible usage of the table tag is to point the table tag at a java.util.List implementation and do nothing else. The table tag will iterate through the list and display a column for each property contained in the objects.

Typically, the only time that you would want to use the tag in this simple way would be during development as a sanity check. For production, you should always define at least a single column.

Basic, columns

    <% request.setAttribute( "test", new TestList(10, false) ); %>

    <display:table name="test">
      <display:column property="id" title="ID" />
      <display:column property="name" />
      <display:column property="email" />
      <display:column property="status" />
      <display:column property="description" title="Comments"/>
    </display:table>

This example starts to show you how to use the table tag. You point the table tag at a datasource (a List), then define a number of columns with properties that map to accessor methods (getXXX) for each object in the List.

Note that you have one column tag for every column that you want to appear in the table. And, the column specifies what property is shown in that particular row.

You can define the content of a column by adding a property attribute to the column tag or adding a content to the tag.

       <display:column property="email" />
       <display:column title="email">email@it.com</display:column>

There are two ways to define the content of a column. Of course, in the tag body you can use scriptlets or other custom tags. Using the property attribute to define the content of a column is usually faster and works better with sorting. If you add a property attribute the tag body is ignored.

Adding content in the column body you can easily concatenate or decorate fields available in objects in the list. See the implicit objects chapter for more details.

The property attribute specifies what getXXX method is called on each item in the list. So for the second column, getName is called. By default the property name is used as the header of the column unless you explicitly give the column a title.