JavaServer Pages, 3rd Edition

Tag Elements

Following the general tag library elements, any number of <tag> elements can be used to describe tag handlers implemented as Java classes. The <tag> element contains other elements that describe different aspects of the custom action. In order, they are <description>, <display-name>, <icon>, <name>, <tag-class>, <tei-class>, <body-content>, <variable>, <attribute>, <dynamic-attributes>, and <example>.

General tag elements

The <description>, <display-name>, and <icon> elements are all optional and can be used to describe each tag handler in the same way as for the tag library itself.

The <name> element is mandatory and contains the name for the corresponding custom action element in the JSP pages. It must be a name that is unique among all Java tag handlers and tag files in the tag library.

The <tag-class> element, also mandatory, contains the fully qualified class name for the tag handler class.

Actions that introduce variables or do special syntax validation, as described in Chapter 22, may need a TagExtraInfo subclass in addition to the tag handler class. The optional <tei-class> element specifies the fully qualified class name for the TagExtraInfo subclass. This class is rarely needed.

The <body-content> is mandatory for JSP 2.0. It can contain one of four values: empty, JSP, scriptless, or tagdependent.

The empty value means that the action body must be empty. If a custom action backed by this tag handler is included in a page with a body, an error message is displayed. ...