TLD Files - DTD and XSD

There are two ways to specify the schema for a TLD (Tag Library Definition) file.

• DTD - Document Type Definition
• XSD - XML Schema Definition

The XSD version is preferred since JSP 2.0 / Servlets 2.4 (eg: Tomcat 5.5). Note that the XML encoding can be specified as ISO-8859-1, UTF-8, or any other valid encoding in either version, and should match the actual encoding of your text file.

XSD example for JSP 2.1 / Servlets 2.5 (Tomcat 6+):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>

<taglib xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" 
      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
      http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-jsptaglibrary_2_1.xsd" 
      version="2.1"> 

	... tag definitions here ...

</taglib>

XSD example for JSP 2.0 / Servlets 2.4 (Tomcat 5.5+):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>

<taglib xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-jsptaglibrary_2_0.xsd"
	version="2.0">

	... tag definitions here ...

</taglib>

• Using the XSD format will usually eliminate the "javax.servlet.ServletException: Exception processing TLD at resource path /WEB-INF/someFile.tld in context" exceptions you may receive when migrating old TLD files to JSP 2.0 (eg: Tomcat 5.5).

DTD example for JSP 1.2 / Servlets 2.3 (Tomcat 4.1+):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<!DOCTYPE taglib
        PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD JSP Tag Library 1.2//EN"
		"http://java.sun.com/j2ee/dtd/web-jsptaglibrary_1_2.dtd">

<taglib>
	... tag definitions here ...
</taglib>

See Also

• web.xml Reference Guide
• Removing taglib from web.xml Article
• Debug Your App - javax.servlet.ServletException