jstl conditional not working - jstl

Question

I'm trying to separate my Java Code from my JSP files and I'm having a bit of a problem. I'm trying to find out whether the user is a guest or not and then printing the appropriate action EG login form or their Username.
Heres my index.jsp file:
<% if(view.guest) { %>
<%= "Scriptlet: Login Form Here" %>
<% } else { %>
<%= "Scriptlet: User Name Here" %>
<% } %>
<br/><br/>
<c:choose>
<c:when test="${view.guest eq true}">
JSTL Tag: Login Form Here
</c:when>
<c:otherwise>
JSTL Tag: User Name Here
</c:otherwise>
</c:choose>
This produces the following output:
Scriptlet: Login Form
JSTL Tag: User Name
As you can see the Scriptlet produces the expected results, but the JSTL tags produce the opposite. Infact if I reverse the JSTL's conditional to false (for debugging purposes) it still produces the same result "JSTL Tag: User Name"
Btw view.guest is a public boolean variable of the object view.

Answer 1

The JSP EL doesn't access local variables. It accesses attributes of the page, request, session or application scope. And it also assumes you're not using public fields (which should never be used), but respect the Java Bean conventions.
And, just as in Java, comparing a boolean with true is unnecessary. You just need
<c:when test="${view.guest}">
And the condition will evaluate to true if there is a page, request, session or application attribute named "view", having a public getGuest() or isGuest() method returning true.
If you didn't use scriptlets at all, you would never have local variables in your pages, and you would never have this problem.