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Bootstrap.jsp

Bootstrap.jsp is a JSP taglib for producing Bootstrap user interfaces.

Bootstrap is a powerful tool for creating nice looking, interactive interfaces quickly and easily. But it's not long before you find yourself wading through a mire of nested DIVs and class names.

If you use JSP and Bootstrap as your view technologies, and are frustrated with the verbosity of Bootstrap markup, or are new to Bootstrap and looking for a simpler way of dealing with the details of Bootstrap compatible markup, then Bootstrap.jsp is for you.

What does it provide?

  • Over 70 JSP tags, covering virtually every Bootstrap class and component, including buttons, alerts, dialogs, navbars, dropdowns, panels, tables and many more.

  • A comprehensive Molding System, allowing you to define preset attributes on all components for easy reuse within your project, with a number of molds shipped by default and ready to use.

  • Composite Components - build custom components comprising several standard components.

  • Structural Validation - Bootstrap.jsp will not let you use a component type where it is not valid or supported by Bootstrap (also classes, i.e. context="madeupcontext" is not allowed)

  • Context aware components - for example, when used within a navbar, a nav will automatically become a navbar-nav. Buttons automatically wrap themselves in button groups when used directly in a justified button group (as the Bootstrap specification requires).

  • Extensions to the Data API, giving you even more control of the behaviour of your components, without writing a single line of JavaScript.

  • In-line documentation and auto-complete (in IDEs supporting these features only), so you can see what tags and attributes are available and what they do from within your editor.

  • The Bootstrap.jsp distribution comes with Bootstrap 3.1.1 bundled, so you can just install the jar file and away you go.

For Example?

Lets compare the Bootstrap markup for a simple button to the Bootstrap.jsp markup required for the same result:

In HTML:

<button class="btn btn-success">
	<span class="glyphicon glypicon-ok"></span> OK
</button>

In Bootstrap.jsp:

<b:button context="success" icon="ok" label="OK"/>

Not convinced? Let's use one of the predefined molds for buttons:

<b:button mold="ok"/>

Let's say you wanted to add an href to your button and have it work as an anchor instead of a button. Without Bootstrap.jsp you'd have to rewrite your markup as:

<a role="button" class="btn btn-success" href="#">
	<span class="glyphicon glyphicon-ok"> </span> OK
</a>

With Bootstrap.jsp, you can simply add an href attribute and it will take care of the markup for you:

<b:button mold="ok" href="#"/>

Installation

Grab a JAR file from the dist folder and place it in your WEB-INF/lib folder. If you are using a Servlet 3.0 compatible container (e.g. Tomcat 7 or higher), that's all there is to it.

If your container is < Servlet 3.0 compatible then you will need to add a servlet to your web.xml to allow the container to serve the bundled Bootstrap and supporting files from the JAR file:

<servlet>
	<servlet-name>ResourceServlet</servlet-name>
	<servlet-class>org.bootstrapjsp.util.ResourceServlet</servlet-class>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
	<servlet-name>ResourceServlet</servlet-name>
	<url-pattern>/bootstrapjsp/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

Getting Started

Once installation is complete, create a new JSP with the following contents, and point your browser at it:

<%@ taglib uri="http://bootstrapjsp.org/" prefix="b" %>
<b:kickstart title="My First Page">
	<b:button mold="ok"/>
</b:kickstart>

The kickstart tag outputs a basic HTML head and body tag to help you get up and running quickly. It is not really intended for production use, and you would probably want to write your own head anyway.

Documentation

The TLD Docs are currently the best source of documentation in terms of what tags are available and what they do. The tags themselves are all in there. The descriptions are not complete, but are being expanded and improved all the time so it is worth checking back every now and again.

The Wiki is slowly being built as well and already contains some useful information that is worth taking a look at.

Reference documentation on all the tags with examples is a work in progress and will be available shortly.