What are directives in JSP?

The JSP directive provides information to the container on how to process the JSP page into its respective servlet.

Syntax

<%@ directive attribute = "value" %> 

There are three JSP directive attributes. They are,

• <%@ page ... %> - this is a page directive and it provides information about the JSP page like a scripting language, buffering requirements to the container. It has a number of attributes like buffer, autoFlush, contentType, session, etc to provide information.
• <%@ include ... %> - this is an include directive and it includes files pertaining to the translation phase.
• <%@ taglib ... %> - this is a tag library directive to define custom user-defined tags.