Book Image

Mastering JavaServer Faces 2.2

By : Anghel Leonard
Book Image

Mastering JavaServer Faces 2.2

By: Anghel Leonard

Overview of this book

Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Mastering JavaServer Faces 2.2
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
The JSF Life Cycle
Index

EL syntax


In this section, you can see an overview of the main aspects of EL 2.2 and 3.0 syntax. EL supports a handful of operators and reserved words. Each of these are quickly described in the following section (more details are in the EL specification document (http://download.oracle.com/otndocs/jcp/el-3_0-fr-eval-spec/index.html)).

EL operators

EL supports the following categories of operators—arithmetic, relational, logical, conditional, empty and added starting with EL 3.0, string concatenation, assignment and semicolon operators:

Textuals

Description

Symbols

A + B

Addition

+

A - B

Subtraction

-

A * B

Multiplication

*

A {div, /} B

Arithmetic operator division

/, div

A {mod, %} B

Arithmetic operator modulo

%, mod

A {and, &&} B

Logical AND

&&, and

A {or, ||} B

Logical OR

||, or

{not, !} A

Logical opposite

!, not

A {lt, <} B

Relational less than

<, lt

A {gt, >} B

Relational greater than

>, gt

A {le, <=} B

Relational less than or equal to

<=, le

A {ge, >=} B

Relational greater than or equal to

>=, ge

A {eq, ==} B

Equal to

==, eq

A {ne, !=} B

Not equal to

!=, ne

A = B

Assignment (EL 3.0)

=

A ; B

Semicolon (EL 3.0)

;

A += B

String concatenation (EL 3.0)

+=

A -> B

Lambda expression (EL 3.0)

->

empty A

Determine whether a value is null or empty

 

A ? B : C

Evaluates B or C, depending on the result of the evaluation of A. Known as the ternary operator.

?:

 

Used when writing EL expressions

.

 

Used when writing EL expressions

[]

EL precedence of operators

Conforming to EL specification, the precedence of operators from the highest to lowest, left to right is as follows:

  • [].

  • () (used to change the precedence of operators)

  • - (unary) not ! empty

  • * / div % mod

  • + - (binary)

  • +=

  • < > <= >= lt gt le ge

  • == != eq ne

  • && and

  • || or

  • ? :

  • -> (lambda expression)

  • =

  • ;

EL reserved words

EL defines the following reserved words:

  • and, or, not, eq, ne, lt, gt, le, ge, true (Boolean literal), false (Boolean literal), null, instanceof (a Java keyword to do a class comparison between objects), empty, div, and mod