Custom tags: passing in maps or other datatypes that arent strings

problem:
I needed to pass a hashmap into a custom tag. This hashmap was to be created on the jsp page using jstl, and then passed into the tag as an attribute.
For some reason i was not able to find the solution with just one google query.

solution:
1. first, to create a hashmap on the jsp using jstl and add some stuff to it:
<br /><jsp:useBean id="something" class="java.util.HashMap"><br /> <c:set target="${something}" property="name1" value="value1"/><br /> <c:set target="${something}" property="name-2" value="blee"/><br /></jsp:useBean><br />

2. next, add another attribute to your tag in the tld file:
<br /><attribute><br /> <name>someName</name><br /> <required>false</required><br /> <rtexprvalue>true</rtexprvalue><br /> <type>java.util.Map</type><br /></attribute><br />

3. finally, pass the hashmap into your tag .. <tag someName="${something}" /> and make sure that the setter in the tag takes in a Map