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What Is a Custom Tag?

A custom tag is a user-defined JSP language element. When a JSP page containing a custom tag is translated into a servlet, the tag is converted to operations on an object called a tag handler. The Web container then invokes those operations when the JSP page's servlet is executed.

Custom tags have a rich set of features. They can

• Be customized via attributes passed from the calling page.
• Access all the objects available to JSP pages.
• Modify the response generated by the calling page.
• Communicate with each other. You can create and initialize a JavaBeans component, create a variable that refers to that bean in one tag, and then use the bean in another tag.
• Be nested within one another, allowing for complex interactions within a JSP page.

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This tutorial contains information on the 1.0 version of the Java Web Services Developer Pack.

All of the material in The Java Web Services Tutorial is copyright-protected and may not be published in other works without express written permission from Sun Microsystems.