Spring MVC Hello World

Spring is the most popular open source java application framework

as of current moment. It is one of the best job enablers too (at least
in Indian software services companies).
Before starting on spring framework, I recommend you to become
strong in core-java first, then remember to study servlets, jsp and
then start on Spring framework.
Spring framework provides multiple modules wherein MVC and
Inversion of Control container are popular among them. In this
article I will present a spring MVC based Hello World web
application.

I am using Spring version 3 latest available

now. SpringSource provides a tool suite (STS) IDE which is based
on Eclipse to develop Spring based applications. But, my personal
choice for now is to continue with Eclipse JEE IDE.

Model View Controller (MVC)

Model view controller is a software architecture design pattern. It
provides solution to layer an application by separating three

concerns business, presentation and control flow. Model contains

business logic, controller takes care of the interaction between view
and model. Controller gets input from view and coverts it in
preferable format for the model and passes to it. Then gets the
response and forwards to view. View contains the presentation part
of the application.

Spring MVC
Spring MVC is a module for enabling us to implement the MVC
pattern. Following image shows the Springs MVC architecture

DispatcherServlet
This class is a front controller that acts as central dispatcher for
HTTP web requests. Based on the handler mappings we provide in
spring configuration, it routes control from view to other controllers
and gets processed result back and routes it back to view.

Control Flow in Spring MVC

1. Based on servletmapping from web.xml request gets routed by
servlet container to a front controller (DispatcherServlet).
2. DispatcherServlet uses handler mapping and forwards the
request to matching controller.
3. Controller processes the request and returns ModeAndView
back to front controller (DispatcherServlet). Generally
controller uses a Service to perform the rules.
4. DispatcherServlet uses the view resolver and sends the model
to view.
5. Response is constructed and control sent back to
DispatcherServlet.
6. DispatcherServlet returns the response.

Spring 3 MVC Sample

Software versions used to run the sample code:

 Spring 3
Java 1.6
Tomcat 7
JSTL 1.2
Eclipse Java EE IDE
Web Application Structure
Use Java EE perspective and create a new dynamic web project. Let
us start with web.xml

web.xml
In web.xml primarily we are doing servlet mapping to give
configuration for DispatcherServlet to load-on-startup and defining
spring configuration path.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchemainstance"
xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"

xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd"
id="WebApp_ID" version="2.5">
<display-name>Spring Hello World</display-name>
<welcome-file-list>
<welcome-file>/</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>

<servlet>
<servlet-name>springDispatcher</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>
org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet
</servlet-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>/WEB-INF/config/spring-context.xml</paramvalue>
</init-param>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>springDispatcher</servlet-name>

<url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
</web-app>
Spring Configuration
This spring configuration file provides context information to spring
container. In our case,
The tag mvc:annotation-driven says that we are using annotation
based configurations. context:component-scan says that the
annotated components like Controller, Service are to be scanned
automatically by Spring container starting from the given package.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context3.0.xsd">

<context:component-scan basepackage="com.javapapers.spring.mvc" />

<mvc:annotation-driven />

<bean

class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceView
Resolver">
<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/view/" />
<property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
</bean>

</beans>
Library files needed
commons-logging.jar
org.springframework.asm-3.1.2.RELEASE.jar
org.springframework.beans-3.1.2.RELEASE.jar
org.springframework.context-3.1.2.RELEASE.jar
org.springframework.core-3.1.2.RELEASE.jar
org.springframework.expression-3.1.2.RELEASE.jar
org.springframework.web.servlet-3.1.2.RELEASE.jar

 org.springframework.web-3.1.2.RELEASE.jar
javax.servlet.jsp.jstl-1.2.1.jar (http://jstl.java.net/download.html
-> JSTL Implementation)
These jars are part of standard spring framework download except
the jstl.
Controller
Following controller class has got methods. First one hello maps to
the url /. Annotation has made our job easier by just declaring the
annotation we order Spring container to invoke this method
whenever this url is called. return hello means this is used for
selecting the view. In spring configuration we have declared
InternalResourceViewResolver and have given a prefix and suffix.
Based on this, the prefix and suffix is added to the returned word
hello thus making it as /WEB-INF/view/hello.jsp. So on invoking
of / the control gets forwarded to the hello.jsp. In hello.jsp we just
print Hello World.
org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver
Added to printing Hello World I wanted to give you a small bonus
with this sample. Just get an input from user and send a response
back based on it. The second method hi serves that purpose in
controller. It gets the user input and concatenates Hi to it and sets
the value in model object. model is a special hashmap passed by
spring container while invoking this method. When we set a keyvalue pair, it becomes available in the view. We can use the key to
get the value and display it in the view which is our hi.jsp. As

explained above InternalResourceViewResolver is used to resole the

view.
package com.javapapers.spring.mvc;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestParam;

@Controller
public class HelloWorldController {

@RequestMapping("/")
public String hello() {
return "hello";
}

@RequestMapping(value = "/hi", method =

RequestMethod.GET)
public String hi(@RequestParam("name") String name, Model
model) {
String message = "Hi " + name + "!";

model.addAttribute("message", message);
return "hi";
}

}
View Hello World
<html>
<head>
<title>Home</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Hello World!</h1>

<hr/>

<form action="hi">
Name: <input type="text" name="name"> <input
type="submit" value="Submit">
</form>

</body>
</html>

Use key message in model to get the value and print it.
<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" prefix="c" %>
<%@ page session="false" %>
<html>
<head>
<title>Result</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1><c:out value="${message}"></c:out></h1>
</body>
</html>
Hello World Output

Spring Form Handling

==================

The following example show how to write a simple web based application
which makes use of HTML forms using Spring Web MVC framework. To
start with it, let us have working Eclipse IDE in place and follow the
following steps to develope a Dynamic Form based Web Application using
Spring Web Framework:
Step Description
1

Create a Dynamic Web Project with a name HelloWeb and

create a packagecom.tutorialspoint under the src folder in
the created project.

Drag and drop below mentioned Spring and other libraries

into the folder WebContent/WEB-INF/lib.

Create a Java classes Student and StudentController under

the com.tutorialspoint package.

Create Spring configuration files Web.xml and HelloWebservlet.xml under theWebContent/WEB-INF folder.

Create a sub-folder with a name jsp under

the WebContent/WEB-INF folder. Create a view
filesstudent.jsp and result.jsp under this sub-folder.

The final step is to create the content of all the source and
configuration files and export the application as explained
below.

Here is the content of Student.java file:

package com.tutorialspoint;
public class Student {
private Integer age;
private String name;
private Integer id;
public void setAge(Integer age) {
this.age = age;
}
public Integer getAge() {
return age;
}
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
public String getName() {
return name;
}
public void setId(Integer id) {
this.id = id;
}
public Integer getId() {
return id;
}
}
Following is the content of StudentController.java file:

package com.tutorialspoint;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import
org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ModelAttribute;
import
org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import
org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView;
import org.springframework.ui.ModelMap;
@Controller
public class StudentController {
@RequestMapping(value = "/student", method =
RequestMethod.GET)
public ModelAndView student() {
return new ModelAndView("student", "command", new
Student());
}
@RequestMapping(value = "/addStudent", method =
RequestMethod.POST)
public String
addStudent(@ModelAttribute("SpringWeb")Student student,
ModelMap model) {
model.addAttribute("name", student.getName());
model.addAttribute("age", student.getAge());
model.addAttribute("id", student.getId());
}

return "result";

}
Here the first service method student(), we have passed a
blank Student object in the ModelAndView object with name "command"
because the spring framework expects an object with name "command" if
you are using <form:form> tags in your JSP file. So when student() method
is called it returnsstudent.jsp view.

Second service method addStudent() will be called against a POST

method on theHelloWeb/addStudent URL. You will prepare your model
object based on the submitted information. Finally a "result" view will be
returned from the service method, which will result in rendering result.jsp
Following is the content of Spring Web configuration file web.xml
<web-app id="WebApp_ID" version="2.4"
xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchemainstance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">
<display-name>Spring MVC Form Handling</displayname>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>HelloWeb</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>
org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet
</servlet-class>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>HelloWeb</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
</web-app>
Following is the content of another Spring Web configuration file HelloWebservlet.xml
<beans
xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/co
ntext"

xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchemainstance"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/springbeans-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/springcontext-3.0.xsd">
<context:component-scan basepackage="com.tutorialspoint" />
<bean
class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalRes
ourceViewResolver">
<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/" />
<property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
</bean>
</beans>
Following is the content of Spring view file student.jsp
<%@taglib
uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags/form"
prefix="form"%>
<html>
<head>
<title>Spring MVC Form Handling</title>
</head>
<body>
<h2>Student Information</h2>
<form:form method="POST" action="/HelloWeb/addStudent">
<table>
<tr>
<td><form:label
path="name">Name</form:label></td>
<td><form:input path="name" /></td>

</tr>
<tr>
<td><form:label
path="age">Age</form:label></td>
<td><form:input path="age" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td><form:label path="id">id</form:label></td>
<td><form:input path="id" /></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td colspan="2">
<input type="submit" value="Submit"/>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
</form:form>
</body>
</html>
Following is the content of Spring view file result.jsp
<%@taglib
uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags/form"
prefix="form"%>
<html>
<head>
<title>Spring MVC Form Handling</title>
</head>
<body>
<h2>Submitted Student Information</h2>
<table>
<tr>
<td>Name</td>
<td>${name}</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Age</td>
<td>${age}</td>
</tr>

<tr>
<td>ID</td>
<td>${id}</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
Finally, following is the list of Spring and other libraries to be included in
your web application. You simply drag these files and drop them
in WebContent/WEB-INF/lib folder.

commons-logging-x.y.z.jar

org.springframework.asm-x.y.z.jar

org.springframework.beans-x.y.z.jar

org.springframework.context-x.y.z.jar

org.springframework.core-x.y.z.jar

org.springframework.expression-x.y.z.jar

org.springframework.web.servlet-x.y.z.jar

org.springframework.web-x.y.z.jar

spring-web.jar
Once you are done with creating source and configuration files, export your
application. Right click on your application and use Export > WAR
File option and save your SpringWeb.war file in Tomcat'swebapps folder.
Now start your Tomcat server and make sure you are able to access other
web pages from webapps folder using a standard browser. Now try a
URL http://localhost:8080/SpringWeb/student and you should see the
following result if everything is fine with your Spring Web Application:

After submitting required information click on submit button to submit the form. You should see the following result if
everything is fine with your Spring Web Application: