JSTL XML Tag x:forEach Example

Details: Written by Nam Ha Minh; Last Updated on 01 September 2019 | Print Email

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This post helps you understand how to use the <x:forEach> tag in the JSTL XML tags library with code example.

You know, the <x:forEach> is the XML iteration tag. This tag is used to iterate over nodes in an XML document.

JSTL <x:forEach> Syntax:

<x:forEach

var="<string>"

select="<string>"

begin="<int>"

end="<int>"

step="<int>"

varStatus="<string>">

...

</x:forEach>

Attributes:

Name	Description
var	Name of the scoped variable which holds the current item in the iteration. This variable’s type depends on the XPath expression in the select attribute.
select	XPath expression to evaluate.
begin	Begin index of the iteration. Iteration begins at the value mentioned in this attribute value. First item has index of 0.
end	End index of the iteration. Iteration stops at the value mentioned in this attribute value (inclusive).
step	Iteration processes for the step value mentioned in this attribute.
varStatus	Name of the scoped variable which holds the loop status of the current iteration. This variable is of type javax.servlet.jsp.jstl.core.LoopTagStatus and has nested visibility.

JSTL <x:forEach> Example:

The following JSP example iterates over nodes in citizens XML document and displays node values in tabular format.

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
    pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%>  
<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" prefix="c" %>
<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/xml" prefix="x"%>
    
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" 
 "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html> 
  <head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
    <title>&lt;x:forEach&gt; Demo</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>&lt;x:forEach&gt; Demo</h1>
    <c:import 
      url="http://localhost:8080/JSTL-Tag-Reference/tag-types/xml/citizens.xml" 
      var="citizenXML"/>
    <x:parse var="doc" xml="${citizenXML}" />
    <table border="1">
    <x:forEach var="citizen" select="$doc/citizens/citizen">
        <tr>        
      <td><x:out select="ssn" /></td>
         <td><x:out select="firstname" /></td>
      <td><x:out select="lastname" /></td>
      <td><x:out select="role" /></td>
          <td><x:out select="salary"/></td>                        
        </tr>        
   </x:forEach>
  </table>
  </body>
</html>

XML Document (given for reference):

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' standalone='no'?>
<citizens>
    <citizen>
        <ssn>Z345T</ssn>
        <firstname>Cheryl</firstname>
        <lastname>Johnson</lastname>
        <role>Manager</role>
        <salary>12000</salary>
    </citizen>
    <citizen>
        <ssn>Z446T</ssn>
        <firstname>John</firstname>
        <lastname>Smith</lastname>
        <role>Employee</role>
        <salary>1000</salary>
    </citizen>
    <citizen>
        <ssn>Z335T</ssn>
        <firstname>Justin</firstname>
        <lastname>Claire</lastname>
        <role>Senior Manager</role>
        <salary>14000</salary>
    </citizen>
    <citizen>
        <ssn>Z389T</ssn>
        <firstname>Clark</firstname>
        <lastname>Rick</lastname>
        <role>Employee</role>
        <salary>2000</salary>
    </citizen>
</citizens>

Output:

Recommended Usage of <x:forEach> tag:

The <x:forEach> tag is the XML counterpart of the core iteration tag. This tag is used to iterate over nodes and to display node values. This tag also has begin, end, step and varStatus attributes to control the iteration behavior.

Other JSTL XML Tags:

if | out | param | parse | set | transform | choose, when, otherwise

About the Author:

Nam Ha Minh is certified Java programmer (SCJP and SCWCD). He began programming with Java back in the days of Java 1.4 and has been passionate about it ever since. You can connect with him on Facebook and watch his Java videos on YouTube.