The plan is to build the column list for this table on the fly. I am supporting multiple departments with the same data, but they would like to see different columns in different orders. I put code related to displaying each column into a table in the database so I could easily add, subtract, and change the order of the columns by doing database updates instead of code changes in the jsp itself.
Table layout: id, column_header_text, display_jsp, dept1_order, dept2_order, dept3_order, dept4_order.
The display_jsp is basically if-true-false, "( value != null, value, space)", so that nulls do not appear in the chart, but in some cases "true" calls a
java method and passes the value to it for a returned value. All of these work fine if I just put them directly on the jsp page.
The actual data to be displayed is in an ArrayList for each row returned from the database.
As for the scriplets vs EL, I am at a new job and this is the way the code is styled. HTML with <%...%> mixed in for control statements (if, for) and calling java methods to return values. I am also new to jsp, although I have used java and have used PHP mixed with HTML before. What would you recommend / what is the current standard ? can you point me to a page / tutorial ?