Trim Spaces in your JSP's HTML Redux
Since my last post on trimming whitespace in JSPs seems to be a popular topic, I figured it appropriate to note that JSP 2.1 supports a new trimWhitespace directive.
<%@ page trimDirectiveWhitespaces="true" %>
If you're using a Servlet 2.5 XSD, you can also do this in your web.xml:
<jsp-config>
<jsp-property-group>
<url-pattern>*.jsp</url-pattern>
<trim-directive-whitespaces>true</trim-directive-whitespaces>
</jsp-property-group>
</jsp-config>
A Servlet 2.5 XSD seems to be the following:
<web-app
xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd"
metadata-complete="false"
version="2.5">
To learn more about this feature, view Summary of New Features in JSP 2.1 Technology and search for "TrimWhiteSpace". It'd be nice if there was anchors in this article for a direct link, but I couldn't find any.
Now I just wish JSP's EL had an xmlEscape="true" flag to escape XML in printed variables. Freemarker supports this.
Hat tip to Kerem and Krishna's Unified Expression Language for JSP and JSF article.