What is JSTL?

The JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Library (JSTL) is a collection of useful JSP tags which encapsulates the core functionality common to many JSP applications.

JSTL has support for common, structural tasks such as iteration and conditionals, tags for manipulating XML documents, internationalization tags, and SQL tags. It also provides a framework for integrating the existing custom tags with the JSTL tags.

Install JSTL Library

To begin working with JSP pages you need to first install the JSTL library. If you are using the Apache Tomcat container, then follow these two steps −

Step 1 − Download the binary distribution from Apache Standard Taglib and unpack the compressed file.

Step 2 − To use the Standard Taglib from its Jakarta Taglibs distribution, simply copy the JAR files in the distribution's 'lib' directory to your application's webapps\ROOT\WEB-INF\lib directory.

To use any of the libraries, you must include a <taglib> directive at the top of each JSP that uses the library.