## JSP directives (<%@)

JSP directives are messages for the JSP engine. They do not directly produce any visible output, but tell the engine what to do with the rest of the JSP page. JSP directives are always enclosed within the <%@ ... %> tag.
The primary directives are page,include and taglib.
Page Directive
Typically, the page directive is found at the top of almost all of your JSP pages. There can be any number of page directives within a JSP page, although the attribute/value pair must be unique. Unrecognized attributes or values result in a translation error. For example,
<%@ page import="java.util.*, com.foo.*" buffer="16k" %>
makes available the types declared within the included packages for scripting and sets the page buffering to 16K.
Include Directive
The include directive lets you separate your content into more manageable elements, such as those for including a common page header or footer. The page included can be a static HTML page or more JSP content. For example, the directive:
<%@ include file="copyright.html" %>
can be used to include the contents of the indicated file at any location within the JSP page.
Taglib Directive
The taglib directive in a JSP page declares that the page uses a tag library. Example of using a tag library:
<%@ taglib uri="http//www.me.com/mylibs" prefix="fantastic" %>
[..]
[..]
<!-- use taglib -->
<fantastic:doSomething>
[..]
[..]