JavaServer Pages, 3rd Edition

Aborting the Page Processing

In Chapter 9, I described how using the <jsp:forward> action or the JSTL <c:redirect> action shifts processing from the current page to the page specified by the page attribute, effectively aborting processing of the current page. Custom actions implemented as Java classes can cause the same thing to happen.

There’s no directive or similar mechanism that a tag file can use to explicitly abort processing, but using <jsp:forward>, <c:redirect>, or a custom action that aborts page processing in a tag file has the same effect; both the tag file processing and the processing of the page that invokes the tag file stop after it aborts the processing. You can use this feature to, for instance, develop a smart forwarding action that decides which page to forward to based on runtime conditions, such as the time of the day, the current user, or the type of browser accessing the page.