'How to install JSTL? The absolute uri: http://java.sun.com/jstl/core cannot be resolved

I don't know what I've done incorrectly, but I can't include JSTL. I have jstl-1.2.jar, but unfortunately I get exception:

org.apache.jasper.JasperException: The absolute uri: http://java.sun.com/jstl/core cannot be resolved in either web.xml or the jar files deployed with this application
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.DefaultErrorHandler.jspError(DefaultErrorHandler.java:51)
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.ErrorDispatcher.dispatch(ErrorDispatcher.java:409)
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.ErrorDispatcher.jspError(ErrorDispatcher.java:116)
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.TagLibraryInfoImpl.generateTLDLocation(TagLibraryInfoImpl.java:315)
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.TagLibraryInfoImpl.<init>(TagLibraryInfoImpl.java:148)
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.Parser.parseTaglibDirective(Parser.java:429)
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.Parser.parseDirective(Parser.java:492)
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.Parser.parseElements(Parser.java:1439)
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.Parser.parse(Parser.java:137)
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.ParserController.doParse(ParserController.java:255)
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.ParserController.parse(ParserController.java:103)
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.Compiler.generateJava(Compiler.java:170)
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.Compiler.compile(Compiler.java:332)
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.Compiler.compile(Compiler.java:312)
    at org.apache.jasper.compiler.Compiler.compile(Compiler.java:299)
    at org.apache.jasper.JspCompilationContext.compile(JspCompilationContext.java:586)
    at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:317)
    at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServlet.java:342)
    at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:267)
    at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:717)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:290)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:206)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:233)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:191)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:128)
    at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:102)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:109)
    at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:293)
    at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.process(Http11Processor.java:849)
    at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol$Http11ConnectionHandler.process(Http11Protocol.java:583)
    at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.JIoEndpoint$Worker.run(JIoEndpoint.java:454)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)

I have:

pom.xml

<dependency>
  <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
  <artifactId>servlet-api</artifactId>
  <version>2.5</version>
  <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>javax.servlet.jsp</groupId>
  <artifactId>jsp-api</artifactId>
  <version>2.1</version>
  <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

<dependency>
  <groupId>taglibs</groupId>
  <artifactId>standard</artifactId>
  <version>1.1.2</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
  <artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
  <version>1.2</version>
</dependency>

web.xml

<web-app 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-app_2_5.xsd"
  version="2.5">

index.jsp

<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/core" prefix="c" %>
<html> 
<head></head>
<body></body>
</html>

jsp servlets jstl

Solution 1:^[1]

org.apache.jasper.JasperException: The absolute uri: http://java.sun.com/jstl/core cannot be resolved in either web.xml or the jar files deployed with this application

That URI is for JSTL 1.0, but you're actually using JSTL 1.2 which uses URIs with an additional /jsp path (because JSTL, who invented EL expressions, was since version 1.1 integrated as part of JSP 2.0 (released way back in 2001!) in order to share/reuse the EL logic in plain JSP too).

So, fix the taglib URI accordingly based on JSTL documentation:

<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>

Further you need to make absolutely sure that you do not throw multiple different versioned JSTL JAR files together into the runtime classpath. This is a pretty common mistake among Tomcat users. The problem with Tomcat is that it does not offer JSTL out the box and thus you have to manually install it. This is not necessary in normal Jakarta EE servers. See also What exactly is Java EE?

In your specific case, your pom.xml basically tells you that you have jstl-1.2.jar and standard-1.1.2.jar together. This is wrong. You're basically mixing JSTL 1.2 API+impl from Oracle with JSTL 1.1 impl from Apache. You should stick to only one JSTL implementation and the API version must match the impl version.

Installing JSTL on Tomcat 10+

In case you're already on Tomcat 10 or newer (the first Jakartified version, with jakarta.* package instead of javax.* package), use JSTL 2.0 via this sole dependency:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.glassfish.web</groupId>
    <artifactId>jakarta.servlet.jsp.jstl</artifactId>
    <version>2.0.0</version>
</dependency>

Non-Maven users can achieve the same by dropping the following two physical files in /WEB-INF/lib folder of the web application project (do absolutely not drop standard*.jar or any loose .tld files in there! remove them if necessary).

jakarta.servlet.jsp.jstl-2.0.0.jar (this is the JSTL 2.0 impl of EE4J)
jakarta.servlet.jsp.jstl-api-2.0.0.jar (this is the JSTL 2.0 API)

Installing JSTL on Tomcat 9-

In case you're not on Tomcat 10 yet, but still on Tomcat 9 or older, use JSTL 1.2 via this sole dependency (this is compatible with Tomcat 9 / 8 / 7 / 6 / 5 but not older):

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.glassfish.web</groupId>
    <artifactId>jakarta.servlet.jsp.jstl</artifactId>
    <version>1.2.6</version>
</dependency>

jakarta.servlet.jsp.jstl-1.2.6.jar (this is the JSTL 1.2 impl of EE4J)
jakarta.servlet.jsp.jstl-api-1.2.7.jar (this is the JSTL 1.2 API)

Installing JSTL on normal JEE server

In case you're actually using a normal Jakarta EE server such as WildFly, Payara, TomEE, GlassFish, WebSphere, OpenLiberty, WebLogic, etc instead of a barebones servletcontainer such as Tomcat, Jetty, Undertow, etc, then you do not need to explicitly install JSTL at all. Normal Jakarta EE servers already provide JSTL out the box. In other words, you don't need to add JSTL to pom.xml nor to drop any JAR/TLD files in webapp. Solely the provided scoped Jakarta EE coordinate is sufficient:

<dependency>
    <groupId>jakarta.platform</groupId>
    <artifactId>jakarta.jakartaee-api</artifactId>
    <version><!-- 9.1.0, 9.0.0, 8.0.0, etc depending on your server --></version>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

Make sure web.xml version is right

Further you should also make sure that your web.xml is declared conform at least Servlet 2.4 and thus not as Servlet 2.3 or older. Otherwise EL expressions inside JSTL tags would in turn fail to work. Pick the highest version matching your target container and make sure that you don't have a <!DOCTYPE> anywhere in your web.xml as that would otherwise still trigger Servlet 2.3 modus. Here's a Servlet 5.0 (Tomcat 10) compatible example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app 
    xmlns="https://jakarta.ee/xml/ns/jakartaee"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="https://jakarta.ee/xml/ns/jakartaee https://jakarta.ee/xml/ns/jakartaee/web-app_5_0.xsd"
    version="5.0">

    <!-- Config here. -->

</web-app>

And here's a Servlet 4.0 (Tomcat 9) compatible example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app
    xmlns="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_4_0.xsd"
    version="4.0">

    <!-- Config here. -->

</web-app>

Solution 2:^[2]

@BalusC is completely right, but If you still encounter this exception, it means that something you have done wrong. The most important information you will find is on the SO JSTL Tag Info page.

Basically this is a summary of what you need to do to deal with this exception.

Check the servlet version in web.xml: <web-app version="2.5">
Check if JSTL version is supported for this servlet version: Servlet version 2.5 uses JSTL 1.2 or Servlet version 2.4 uses JSTL 1.1
Your servlet container must have the appropriate library, or you must include it manually in your application. For example: JSTL 1.2 requires jstl-1.2.jar

What to do with Tomcat 5 or 6:

You need to include appropriate jar(s) into your WEB-INF/lib directory (it will work only for your application) or to the tomcat/lib (will work globally for all applications).

The last thing is a taglib in your jsp files. For JSTL 1.2 correct one is this:

<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>

Solution 3:^[3]

I found another reason for this type of error: in my case, someone set the conf/catalina.properties setting tomcat.util.scan.StandardJarScanFilter.jarsToSkip property to * to avoid log warning messages, thereby skipping the necessary scan by Tomcat. Changing this back to the Tomcat default and adding an appropriate list of jars to skip (not including jstl-1.2 or spring-webmvc) solved the problem.

Solution 4:^[4]

Download jstl-1.2.jar
Add this directive to your page: <%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" prefix="c" %>
Paste the JAR file in your WEB-INF/lib folder. This should work. (It worked for me.)

Solution 5:^[5]

jstl-1.2.jar --> <%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>
jstl-1.1.jar --> <%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/core" %>

also please check for the dependency jars that you have added javax.servlet.jar and javax.servlet.jsp.jstl-1.2.1.jar or not in your WEB-INF/lib folder. In my case these two solved the issue.

Solution 6:^[6]

Add the jstl-1.2.jar into the tomcat/lib folder.

With this, your dependency error will be fixed again.

Solution 7:^[7]

An answer for the year 2021

The question is still very popular, but all the answers are seriously outdated. All Java EE components were split off into various Jakarta projects and JSTL is no different. So here are the correct Maven dependencies as of today:

<dependency>
    <groupId>jakarta.servlet.jsp.jstl</groupId>
    <artifactId>jakarta.servlet.jsp.jstl-api</artifactId>
    <version>1.2.7</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.glassfish.web</groupId>
    <artifactId>jakarta.servlet.jsp.jstl</artifactId>
    <version>1.2.6</version>
</dependency>

Yes, the versions and groupIds do not match, but that's a quirk of the project's current state.

Solution 8:^[8]

I just wanted to add the fix I found for this issue. I'm not sure why this worked. I had the correct version of jstl (1.2) and also the correct version of servlet-api (2.5)

<dependency>
    <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
    <artifactId>servlet-api</artifactId>
    <version>2.5</version>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
    <artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
    <version>1.2</version>
</dependency>

I also had the correct address in my page as suggested in this thread, which is

<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>

What fixed this issue for me was removing the scope tag from my xml file in the pom for my jstl 1.2 dependency. Again not sure why that fixed it but just in case someone is doing the spring with JPA and Hibernate tutorial on pluralsight and has their pom setup this way, try removing the scope tag and see if that fixes it. Like I said it worked for me.

Solution 9:^[9]

I have mentioned that the Maven dependency in the pom.xml is wrong. It should be

    <dependency>
        <groupId>jstl</groupId>
        <artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
        <version>1.2</version>
    </dependency>

Solution 10:^[10]

I had disabled MAVEN and Spring tools completely. And I had to add the following jar's for making my environment work right.

spring-aop-4.0.3.RELEASE.jar
spring-beans-4.0.3.RELEASE.jar (tough to find this fix, other org.springframework<3.versions> just did not work.
spring-context-4.0.3.RELEASE.jar
spring-core-4.0.3.RELEASE.jar
spring-expression-4.0.3.RELEASE.jar
spring-web-4.0.3.RELEASE.jar
spring-webmvc-4.0.3.RELEASE.jar
jstl-1.2.jar

The worst of all was jstl-api-1.2.jar and javax-servlet.jsp.jst-api-1.2.1.jar. They just did not work.

jstl-1.2.jar worked well.

Solution 11:^[11]

If you use Spring boot, consider to remove server.tomcat.additional-tld-skip-patterns=*.jar from Application.properties if there is any

Solution 12:^[12]

Just had similar problem in Eclipse fixed with:

rightclick on project->Properties->Deployment Assembly->add Maven Dependencies

something kicked it out before, while I was editing my pom.xml

I had all needed jar files, taglib uri and web.xml was ok

Solution 13:^[13]

The most possible solutions for 2022

1 - Missing Libarires: download the library jstl/1.2 and Java Servlet API » 4.0.1

2 - Add these libraries to your project and also into the tomcat/lib folder.

3 - Add: <%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %> first line of the page.

4 - if you are using maven add the following into pom.xml file :

<dependency>
    <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
    <artifactId>servlet-api</artifactId>
    <version>2.5</version>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
    <artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
    <version>1.2</version>
</dependency>

Solution 14:^[14]

All of the answers in this question helped me but I thought I'd add some additional information for posterity.

It turned out that I had a test dependency on gwt-test-utils which brought in the gwt-dev package. Unfortunately gwt-dev contains a full copy of Jetty, JSP, JSTL, etc. which was ahead of the proper packages on the classpath. So even though I had proper dependencies on the JSTL 1.2 it would loading the 1.0 version internal to gwt-dev. Grumble.

The solution for me was to not run with test scope so I don't pick up the gwt-test-utils package at runtime. Removing the gwt-dev package from the classpath in some other manner would also have fixed the problem.

Solution 15:^[15]

If using Tomcat 10:

Download

jakarta.servlet.jsp.jstl-2.0.0.jar

jakarta.servlet.jsp.jstl-api-2.0.0.jar

Place in /WEB-INF/lib folder.

Don't forget to restart Tomcat!

Solution 16:^[16]

This workedfor me

    <groupId>jstl</groupId>
    <artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
    <version>1.2</version>

Solution 17:^[17]

I had the same issue , I am using eclipse, just in case others experience the same issue:
In eclipse double click the tomcat server,
stop the server
untick the "server modules without publishing"
start the server.

Solution 18:^[18]

Resolved same problem in Netbeans 12.3 and Tomcat 9.0:

1.Write in pom.xml:

<dependency>
<groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
<artifactId>jstl</artifactId><version>1.2</version>
</dependency>

2.Add jstl-1.2.jar in project.

3.Install manually artifact(Choose jstl-1.2.jar - downloaded from the Internet )

Solution 19:^[19]

Resolved similar problem in IBM RAD 7.5 by selecting:

Projects properties
Project Facets
JSTL check-box

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution	Source
Solution 1
Solution 2	Stephen P
Solution 3	Gary Sheppard
Solution 4	Bhaskara Arani
Solution 5	Gray
Solution 6
Solution 7
Solution 8	Meyer
Solution 9	LoBo
Solution 10	Reinderien
Solution 11	Askar
Solution 12
Solution 13	Abd Abughazaleh
Solution 14
Solution 15	zony
Solution 16	Claudiu Guiman
Solution 17
Solution 18	Lenny
Solution 19	hrbrmstr

'How to install JSTL? The absolute uri: http://java.sun.com/jstl/core cannot be resolved

Solution 1:[1]

Installing JSTL on Tomcat 10+

Installing JSTL on Tomcat 9-

Installing JSTL on normal JEE server

Make sure web.xml version is right

See also:

Solution 2:[2]

Solution 3:[3]

Solution 4:[4]

Solution 5:[5]

Solution 6:[6]

Solution 7:[7]

An answer for the year 2021

Solution 8:[8]

Solution 9:[9]

Solution 10:[10]

Solution 11:[11]

Solution 12:[12]

Solution 13:[13]