[Quicky] JSTL and comparing strings

This is the first article in a series of really short articles with problems I come across in my day to day development life. You can recognize these articles by the ‘[Quicky]‘ reference in the title and of course a ‘quicky’ tag is supplied. These ‘quickies’ don’t supply much explanation on why the problem exists, but more how to solve it.

Today I had to compare a variable with a string value using JSTL. Something like:

<c:choose>
  <c:when test="${variable eq "expected value"}">
    something
  </c:when>
</c:choose>

will obviously not work, because the XML becomes invalid. The way to do it however is:

<c:choose>
  <c:when test="${variable eq 'expected value'}">
    something
  </c:when>
</c:choose>

Replacing the double quotes surrounding the string value by single quotes does the trick.

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One Response to “[Quicky] JSTL and comparing strings”

  1. Joaquin Says:

    Really usefull!

    I was struggling with this…

    Thank you!.

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