java - How to use session in JSP pages to get information?

Question

I have a JSP page used for editing some user's info. When a user logins to the website, I keep the information in the session, then in my edit page I try the following:

<%! String username=session.getAttribute("username"); %>
<form action="editinfo" method="post">
    <table>
        <tr>
            <td>Username: </td><td> <input type="text" value="<%=username %>" /> </td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</form>

but it gives error saying session cannot be resolved. What can I do about it?

Answer 1

JSP implicit objects likes session, request etc. are not available inside JSP declaration <%! %> tags.

You could use it directly in your expression as

<td>Username: </td>
<td><input type="text" value="<%= session.getAttribute("username") %>" /></td>

On other note, using scriptlets in JSP has been long deprecated. Use of EL (expression language) and JSTL tags is highly recommended. For example, here you could use EL as

<td>Username: </td>
<td><input type="text" value="${username}" /></td>

The best part is that scope resolution is done automatically. So, here username could come from page, or request, or session, or application scopes in that order. If for a particular instance you need to override this because of a name collision you can explicitly specify the scope as

<td><input type="text" value="${requestScope.username}" /></td> or,
<td><input type="text" value="${sessionScope.username}" /></td> or,
<td><input type="text" value="${applicationScope.username}" /></td>