In this article we will discuss one of the action tags, “forward action”, used in JSP with a suitable example.

Forward action tag

The forward action tag forwards requests to another resource and it may be a JSP page, a HTML page or another type of resource. Tags are used to do a specific task. Actually action tags control the flow among the pages.

There are the following two types of forward action tags:

  • Without parameter
  • With parameter

forward action tag 

Syntax of forward action tag (without parameter):

<jsp:forward page="relative url | <%=expression%>"/>

Example

In this example, we are just forwarding the request to the show.jsp page and retrieving the information related to the page.

Index.jsp
  1. <html>  
  2. <head>  
  3. <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">  
  4. <title>JSP forward action tag</title>  
  5. </head>  
  6. <body>  
  7. <h1>This is index page</h1>  
  8. <jsp:forward page="show.jsp"/>  
  9. </body>  
  10. </html> 

Show.jsp

  1. <html>  
  2. <head>  
  3. <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">  
  4. <title>JSP forward action tag</title>  
  5. </head>  
  6. <body>  
  7. <h1>Hello World!</h1>  
  8. <p>This is what you suppose to see</p>  
  9. <% out.print("Today's date & time:"+java.util.Calendar.getInstance().getTime());%>  
  10. </body>  
  11. </html> 

Output

Output

Syntax of forward action tag (with parameter):
  1. <jsp:forward page="relative url | <%=expression%>">  
  2. <jsp:param name="parametername" value="parametervalue | <%=expression%>"/>  
  3. </jsp:forward> 

Example

In this example, we are forwarding the request to the show.jsp page with parameters and the show.jsp page prints the parameter values.

Index.jsp

  1. <html>  
  2. <head>  
  3. <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">  
  4. <title>JSP forward action tag</title>  
  5. </head>  
  6. <body>  
  7. <h1>This is index page</h1>  
  8. <jsp:forward page="show.jsp">  
  9. <jsp:param name="name" value="Gopi Chand"/>  
  10. <jsp:param name="site" value="c-sharpcorner.com"/>  
  11. <jsp:param name="Date&Time" value="c-sharpcorner.com"/>  
  12. </jsp:forward>  
  13. </body>  
  14. </html> 

Show.jsp

  1. <html>  
  2. <head>  
  3. <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">  
  4. <title>JSP forward action tag</title>  
  5. </head>  
  6. <body>  
  7. <h1>Hello World!</h1>  
  8. <p>Now see the changes</p>  
  9. My name:<%=request.getParameter("name")%><br>  
  10. Source page:<%=request.getParameter("site")%><br>  
  11. <% out.print("Today's date & time:"+java.util.Calendar.getInstance().getTime());%>  
  12. Date & Time:<%=request.getParameter("Date&Time")%>  
  13. </body>  
  14. </html> 

Output

 prints the parameter values

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