Jasper 2 JSP Engine How To

Table of Contents

Introduction

Tomcat 11.0 uses the Jasper 2 JSP Engine to implement the JavaServer Pages 2.3 specification.

Jasper 2 has been redesigned to significantly improve performance over the original Jasper. In addition to general code improvements the following changes were made:

  • JSP Custom Tag Pooling - The java objects instantiated for JSP Custom Tags can now be pooled and reused. This significantly boosts the performance of JSP pages which use custom tags.
  • Background JSP compilation - If you make a change to a JSP page which had already been compiled Jasper 2 can recompile that page in the background. The previously compiled JSP page will still be available to serve requests. Once the new page has been compiled successfully it will replace the old page. This helps improve availability of your JSP pages on a production server.
  • Recompile JSP when included page changes - Jasper 2 can now detect when a page included at compile time from a JSP has changed and then recompile the parent JSP.
  • JDT used to compile JSP pages - The Eclipse JDT Java compiler is now used to perform JSP java source code compilation. This compiler loads source dependencies from the container classloader. Ant and javac can still be used.

Jasper is implemented using the servlet class org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.

Configuration

By default Jasper is configured for use when doing web application development. See the section Production Configuration for information on configuring Jasper for use on a production Tomcat server.

The servlet which implements Jasper is configured using init parameters in your global $CATALINA_BASE/conf/web.xml.

  • checkInterval - If development is false and checkInterval is greater than zero, background compiles are enabled. checkInterval is the time in seconds between checks to see if a JSP page (and its dependent files) needs to be recompiled. Default 0 seconds.
  • classdebuginfo - Should the class file be compiled with debugging information? true or false, default true.
  • classpath - Defines the class path to be used to compile the generated servlets. This parameter only has an effect if the ServletContext attribute org.apache.jasper.Constants.SERVLET_CLASSPATH is not set. This attribute is always set when Jasper is used within Tomcat. By default the classpath is created dynamically based on the current web application.
  • compiler - Which compiler Ant should use to compile JSP pages. The valid values for this are the same as for the compiler attribute of Ant's javac task. If the value is not set, then the default Eclipse JDT Java compiler will be used instead of using Ant. There is no default value. If this attribute is set then setenv.[sh|bat] should be used to add ant.jar, ant-launcher.jar and tools.jar to the CLASSPATH environment variable.
  • compilerSourceVM - What JDK version are the source files compatible with? (Default value: 17)
  • compilerTargetVM - What JDK version are the generated files compatible with? (Default value: 17)
  • development - Is Jasper used in development mode? If true, the frequency at which JSPs are checked for modification may be specified via the modificationTestInterval parameter.true or false, default true.
  • displaySourceFragment - Should a source fragment be included in exception messages? true or false, default true.
  • dumpSmap - Should the SMAP info for JSR45 debugging be dumped to a file? true or false, default false. false if suppressSmap is true.
  • enablePooling - Determines whether tag handler pooling is enabled. This is a compilation option. It will not alter the behaviour of JSPs that have already been compiled. true or false, default true.
  • engineOptionsClass - Allows specifying the Options class used to configure Jasper. If not present, the default EmbeddedServletOptions will be used.
  • errorOnUseBeanInvalidClassAttribute - Should Jasper issue an error when the value of the class attribute in an useBean action is not a valid bean class? true or false, default true.
  • fork - Have Ant fork JSP page compiles so they are performed in a separate JVM from Tomcat? true or false, default true.
  • genStringAsCharArray - Should text strings be generated as char arrays, to improve performance in some cases? Default false.
  • javaEncoding - Java file encoding to use for generating java source files. Default UTF8.
  • keepgenerated - Should we keep the generated Java source code for each page instead of deleting it? true or false, default true.
  • mappedfile - Should we generate static content with one print statement per input line, to ease debugging? true or false, default true.
  • maxLoadedJsps - The maximum number of JSPs that will be loaded for a web application. If more than this number of JSPs are loaded, the least recently used JSPs will be unloaded so that the number of JSPs loaded at any one time does not exceed this limit. A value of zero or less indicates no limit. Default -1
  • jspIdleTimeout - The amount of time in seconds a JSP can be idle before it is unloaded. A value of zero or less indicates never unload. Default -1
  • modificationTestInterval - Causes a JSP (and its dependent files) to not be checked for modification during the specified time interval (in seconds) from the last time the JSP was checked for modification. A value of 0 will cause the JSP to be checked on every access. Used in development mode only. Default is 4 seconds.
  • recompileOnFail - If a JSP compilation fails should the modificationTestInterval be ignored and the next access trigger a re-compilation attempt? Used in development mode only and is disabled by default as compilation may be expensive and could lead to excessive resource usage.
  • scratchdir - What scratch directory should we use when compiling JSP pages? Default is the work directory for the current web application.
  • suppressSmap - Should the generation of SMAP info for JSR45 debugging be suppressed? true or false, default false.
  • trimSpaces - Should template text that consists entirely of whitespace be removed from the output (true), replaced with a single space (single) or left unchanged (false)? Alternatively, the extended option will remove leading and trailing whitespace from template text and collapse sequences of whitespace and newlines within the template text to a single new line. Note that if a JSP page or tag file specifies a trimDirectiveWhitespaces value of true, that will take precedence over this configuration setting for that page/tag. Default false.
  • xpoweredBy - Determines whether X-Powered-By response header is added by generated servlet. true or false, default false.
  • strictQuoteEscaping - When scriptlet expressions are used for attribute values, should the rules in JSP.1.6 for the escaping of quote characters be strictly applied? true or false, default true.
  • quoteAttributeEL - When EL is used in an attribute value on a JSP page, should the rules for quoting of attributes described in JSP.1.6 be applied to the expression? true or false, default true.
  • variableForExpressionFactory - The name of the variable to use for the expression language expression factory. If not specified, the default value of _el_expressionfactory will be used.
  • variableForInstanceManager - The name of the variable to use for the instance manager factory. If not specified, the default value of _jsp_instancemanager will be used.
  • poolTagsWithExtends - By default, JSPs that use their own base class via the extends attribute of the page directive, will have Tag pooling disabled since Jasper cannot guarantee that the necessary initialisation will have taken place. This can have a negative impact on performance. Providing the alternative base class calls _jspInit() from Servlet.init(), setting this property to true will enable pooling with an alternative base class. If the alternative base class does not call _jspInit() and this property is true, NPEs will occur when attempting to use tags. true or false, default false.
  • strictGetProperty - If true, the requirement to have the object referenced in jsp:getProperty action to be previously "introduced" to the JSP processor, as specified in the chapter JSP.5.3 of JSP 2.0 and later specifications, is enforced. true or false, default true.
  • strictWhitespace - If false the requirements for whitespace before an attribute name will be relaxed so that the lack of whitespace will not cause an error. true or false, default true.
  • jspServletBase - The base class of the Servlets generated from the JSPs.If not specified, the default value of org.apache.jasper.runtime.HttpJspBase will be used.
  • serviceMethodName - The name of the service method called by the base class. If not specified, the default value of _jspService will be used.
  • servletClasspathAttribute - The name of the ServletContext attribute that provides the classpath for the JSP. If not specified, the default value of org.apache.catalina.jsp_classpath will be used.
  • jspPrecompilationQueryParameter - The name of the query parameter that causes the JSP engine to just pregenerate the servlet but not invoke it. If not specified, the default value of jsp_precompile will be used, as defined by JSP specification (JSP.11.4.2).
  • generatedJspPackageName - The default package name for compiled JSPs. If not specified, the default value of org.apache.jsp will be used.
  • generatedTagFilePackageName - The default package name for tag handlers generated from tag files. If not specified, the default value of org.apache.jsp.tag will be used.
  • tempVariableNamePrefix - Prefix to use for generated temporary variable names. If not specified, the default value of _jspx_temp will be used.
  • useInstanceManagerForTags - If true, the instance manager is used to obtain tag handler instances. true or false, default false.
  • limitBodyContentBuffer - If true, any tag buffer that expands beyond the value of the bodyContentTagBufferSize init parameter will be destroyed and a new buffer created. true or false, default false.
  • bodyContentTagBufferSize - The size (in characters) to use when creating a tag buffer. If not specified, the default value of org.apache.jasper.Constants.DEFAULT_TAG_BUFFER_SIZE (512) will be used.

The Java compiler from Eclipse JDT in included as the default compiler. It is an advanced Java compiler which will load all dependencies from the Tomcat class loader, which will help tremendously when compiling on large installations with tens of JARs. On fast servers, this will allow sub-second recompilation cycles for even large JSP pages.

Apache Ant, which was used in previous Tomcat releases, can be used instead of the new compiler by configuring the compiler attribute as explained above.

If you need to change the JSP Servlet settings for an application you can override the default configuration by re-defining the JSP Servlet in /WEB-INF/web.xml. However, this may cause problems if you attempt to deploy the application on another container as the JSP Servlet class may not be recognised. You can work-around this problem by using the Tomcat specific /WEB-INF/tomcat-web.xml deployment descriptor. The format is identical to /WEB-INF/web.xml. It will override any default settings but not those in /WEB-INF/web.xml. Since it is Tomcat specific, it will only be processed when the application is deployed on Tomcat.

Known issues

As described in bug 39089, a known JVM issue, bug 6294277, may cause a java.lang.InternalError: name is too long to represent exception when compiling very large JSPs. If this is observed then it may be worked around by using one of the following:

  • reduce the size of the JSP
  • disable SMAP generation and JSR-045 support by setting suppressSmap to true.

Production Configuration

The main JSP optimization which can be done is precompilation of JSPs. However, this might not be possible (for example, when using the jsp-property-group feature) or practical, in which case the configuration of the Jasper servlet becomes critical.

When using Jasper 2 in a production Tomcat server you should consider making the following changes from the default configuration.

  • development - To disable on access checks for JSP pages compilation set this to false.
  • genStringAsCharArray - To generate slightly more efficient char arrays, set this to true.
  • modificationTestInterval - If development has to be set to true for any reason (such as dynamic generation of JSPs), setting this to a high value will improve performance a lot.
  • trimSpaces - To remove unnecessary bytes from the response, consider setting this to single or extended.

Web Application Compilation

Using Ant is the preferred way to compile web applications using JSPC. Note that when pre-compiling JSPs, SMAP information will only be included in the final classes if suppressSmap is false and compile is true. Use the script given below (a similar script is included in the "deployer" download) to precompile a webapp: 

<project name="Webapp Precompilation" default="all" basedir=".">

   <import file="${tomcat.home}/bin/catalina-tasks.xml"/>

   <target name="jspc">

    <jasper
             validateXml="false"
             uriroot="${webapp.path}"
             webXmlInclude="${webapp.path}/WEB-INF/generated_web.xml"
             outputDir="${webapp.path}/WEB-INF/src" />

  </target>

  <target name="compile">

    <mkdir dir="${webapp.path}/WEB-INF/classes"/>
    <mkdir dir="${webapp.path}/WEB-INF/lib"/>

    <javac destdir="${webapp.path}/WEB-INF/classes"
           debug="on" failonerror="false"
           srcdir="${webapp.path}/WEB-INF/src"
           excludes="**/*.smap">
      <classpath>
        <pathelement location="${webapp.path}/WEB-INF/classes"/>
        <fileset dir="${webapp.path}/WEB-INF/lib">
          <include name="*.jar"/>
        </fileset>
        <pathelement location="${tomcat.home}/lib"/>
        <fileset dir="${tomcat.home}/lib">
          <include name="*.jar"/>
        </fileset>
        <fileset dir="${tomcat.home}/bin">
          <include name="*.jar"/>
        </fileset>
      </classpath>
      <include name="**" />
      <exclude name="tags/**" />
    </javac>

  </target>

  <target name="all" depends="jspc,compile">
  </target>

  <target name="cleanup">
    <delete>
        <fileset dir="${webapp.path}/WEB-INF/src"/>
        <fileset dir="${webapp.path}/WEB-INF/classes/org/apache/jsp"/>
    </delete>
  </target>

</project>

The following command line can be used to run the script (replacing the tokens with the Tomcat base path and the path to the webapp which should be precompiled): 

$ANT_HOME/bin/ant -Dtomcat.home=<$TOMCAT_HOME> -Dwebapp.path=<$WEBAPP_PATH>

Then, the declarations and mappings for the servlets which were generated during the precompilation must be added to the web application deployment descriptor. Insert the ${webapp.path}/WEB-INF/generated_web.xml at the right place inside the ${webapp.path}/WEB-INF/web.xml file. Restart the web application (using the manager) and test it to verify it is running fine with precompiled servlets. An appropriate token placed in the web application deployment descriptor may also be used to automatically insert the generated servlet declarations and mappings using Ant filtering capabilities. This is actually how all the webapps distributed with Tomcat are automatically compiled as part of the build process.

At the jasper task you can use the option addWebXmlMappings for automatic merge the ${webapp.path}/WEB-INF/generated_web.xml with the current web application deployment descriptor at ${webapp.path}/WEB-INF/web.xml.

When you want to use a specific version of Java for your JSP's, add the javac compiler task attributes source and target with appropriate values. For example, 16 to compile JSPs for Java 16.

For production you may wish to disable debug info with debug="off".

When you don't want to stop the JSP generation at first JSP syntax error, use failOnError="false" and with showSuccess="true" all successful JSP to Java generation are printed out. Sometimes it is very helpful, when you cleanup the generate java source files at ${webapp.path}/WEB-INF/src and the compile JSP servlet classes at ${webapp.path}/WEB-INF/classes/org/apache/jsp.

Hints:

  • When you switch to another Tomcat release, then regenerate and recompile your JSP's with the new Tomcat version.
  • Use a Servlet context parameter to disable PageContext pooling org.apache.jasper.runtime.JspFactoryImpl.POOL_SIZE=-1 and limit the buffering with the JSP Servlet init-param limitBodyContentBuffer=true. Note that changing from the defaults may affect performance, but it will vary depending on the application.

Optimisation

There are a number of extension points provided within Jasper that enable the user to optimise the behaviour for their environment.

The first of these extension points is the tag plug-in mechanism. This allows alternative implementations of tag handlers to be provided for a web application to use. Tag plug-ins are registered via a tagPlugins.xml file located under WEB-INF. A sample plug-in for the JSTL is included with Jasper.

The second extension point is the Expression Language interpreter. Alternative interpreters may be configured through the ServletContext. See the ELInterpreterFactory javadoc for details of how to configure an alternative EL interpreter. A alternative interpreter primarily targeting tag settings is provided at org.apache.jasper.optimizations.ELInterpreterTagSetters. See the javadoc for details of the optimisations and the impact they have on specification compliance.

An extension point is also provided for coercion of String values to Enums. It is provided at org.apache.jasper.optimizations.StringInterpreterEnum. See the javadoc for details of the optimisations and the impact they have on specification compliance.