JavaServer Pages, 3rd Edition

Using the <jsp:root> Element

Most JSP Documents developed for JSP 2.0 don’t use the <jsp:root> element, but it’s still supported. Potential reasons for using it in JSP 2.0 are if you need to generate a sequence of XML documents (i.e., the result has more than one root element) or if you want to generate content that is not XML at all but you prefer to use XML syntax in the JSP page (e.g., because you’re using an XML-aware editor).

The <jsp:root> element has a mandatory version attribute, and it can be used to declare the JSP namespace and custom tag libraries used in the page with xmlns attributes:

                  <jsp:root 
                  xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page" 
  xmlns:c="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core"
  version="2.0"> 

  ...
  
</jsp:root>

The version attribute value is the JSP specification version the document complies with, and it must be 1.2 or 2.0. Other than that, a JSP Document with <jsp:root> as its root element looks just the same as the JSP Documents described earlier. The element only serves to identify the page as a JSP Document, and it’s not included in the response produced by the page.