Can servlet attribute names contain a hyphen -?

Question

Can servlet attribute names contain a hyphen -?

Because, I tried to retrieve the attributes from the request set in the doPost in my servlet, b

Answer 1

Your concrete problem is not the HTTP request parameter, but the EL variable name. All Java keywords and identifiers are illegal in EL variable names.

The - is a subtraction operator in Java (and also in EL). How should the EL processor know if you meant to use an attribute with the literal name X-User or the result of an integer subtraction of ${User} from ${X}? It's by specification interpreted as latter which also explains the numeric result of 0.

Just use underscore or camelcase instead, like as in normal Java.

request.setAttribute("Y_User", X_USER);
request.setAttribute("Y_Code", Y_CODE);

${X_User}
${Y_Code}

If you absolutely need to access a request attribute containing a hyphen in EL, then use the brace notationon the request scope map:

${requestScope['X-User']}
${requestScope['Y-User']}

The same applies to request parameters, by the way, which you don't necessarily need to copy over into the request scope in the servlet:

${param['X-User']}
${param['Y-Code']}

See also:

• EL 3.0 specification
• Our EL wiki page