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JSTE User Guide

JSTE templates are made of output text interspersed with template code fragments of the following types.

Scriptlets, which are pieces of Javascript code surrounded by <% and %>, just as in JSP.
Expressions, which are Javascript expressions embedded between <%= and %>, or equivalently, between ${ and }.
Comments embedded between <%-- and --%>, which are ignored by the template processor and will not appear in the output.

A scriptlet can contain any valid Javascript code. Scriptlets can also include:

Calls to document.write to write data into the output stream.
Calls to document.include to include files from within the template expansion environment.
Invocations of methods on Java objects made available via the Java interface. The default implementation provides one standard object named templateContext as a way of interfacing with the Java environment, and you can invoke any of its Java methods from within the template Javascript code.

The document.include call causes the template engine to read the contents of the specified parameter file and expand its contents at that point. Nested includes are allowed, i.e., included files may in turn include other files. Look here for an example.

The predefined templateContext Java object is wrapped in Javascript for easy access. Ideally, you would pass a Java Map instance for the templateContext. Doing so enables your Javascript code to access the Map as if it were a regular Javascript array. If this Map contains other Map or List instances or Java arrays within it, they are in turn wrapped automatically into the Javascript environment so that they can be accessed as if they were Javascript arrays. You can also pass any Java object as an element of the Map or its elements, and then proceed to invoke methods on the Java object.