Reviews : Java Books :
Professional Java Server Programming J2EE Edition : Chapter 12

Title: Professional Java Server Programming J2EE Edition ISBN: 1861004656 US Price: $ 64.99 Canadian Price: C$ 97.95 UK Price: £ 46.99 Publication Date: September 2000 Pages: 1633 © Wrox Press Limited, US and UK.

From the point of view of the JSP developer, the only significant new feature of JSP 1.1 is support for tag extensions(often referred to as custom tags). However, this proves to be very significant indeed.

Tag extensions look like HTML (or rather, XML) tags embedded in a JSP page. They have a special meaning to a JSP engine at translation time, and enable application functionality to be invoked without the need to write Java code in JSP scriptlets. Well-designed tag extension libraries can enable application functionality to be invoked without the appearance of programming. So in this chapter, we'll look at the basics of writing your own tags and then in the next chapter we'll look at some more advanced examples. So in this chapter we will cover:

• Tag extension basics
• The anatomy of a tag extension
• How to deploy a tag library
• How to write custom tag extensions

Let's get started then with what tag extensions are all about.

Tag Extension 101

Consider the <jsp:forward> action provided by the JSP specification. This tag dispatches the current request to another page in the current web application. It can be invoked with the following syntax:

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