Deferred EL in JSP 2.0

Question

Is there a way to use something like deferred EL in JSP 2.0 / J2EE 1.4? The idea is to pass a test to a tag file and have it display an item in a list (or not) based on the value of the expression. Basically, I'd like to do something like this:

JSP:

<x:myTag items="${myCollection}" test="${item.visible}"/>

myTag.tag

<c:forEach var="item" items="${collection}">
    <c:if test="${test}">
        ${item}
    </c:if>
</c:forEach>

Upgrading our JSP container is not an option. Any ideas?

Update:

I tried doing this with JSP fragments, but the EL in the fragment was evaluated once in the JSP, rather than once per iteration in the tag.

Answer 1

You should be able to do this with jsp fragments. I believe it will not be the extremely elegant solution you would appreciate, but it does allow the execution of the expression to be deferred until inside the tag.

Edit: You could check out the variable with the "name-given" setting.

(I will readily admit I did something like what you're trying to do about 2 years ago. I have not touched it since. I remember I thought it was quite arcane)