Spring MVC example code

Let’s assume that we have already finished whatever was discussed on page number 3 & 4. And that now we can see “Hello World !” in our Spring tool suite console.

Now we need to tweak our application a bit in order to make this a Spring MVC application

The complete example is shared on GitHub as well. Check till the end of the post for better understanding ~

1. Add required dependencies for the Spring MVC in our pom.xml file. We need to add the spring-webmvc and spring-web dependecies from org.springframework . Also we need JSTL, as we will be binding dynamic variables into our JSP.

<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
<version>4.3.9.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>

<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
<version>4.3.9.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>

<dependency>
<groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
<artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
<version>1.2</version>
</dependency>

2. Modify our web.xml file to forward any request made to our application to the Dispatcher Servlet controller. We mention in this file that we shall be using “servlet-context.xml” as our dispatcher servlet configuration file.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd" id="WebApp_ID" version="3.0">
  <display-name>spring-mvc-example</display-name>

	<!-- Add Spring MVC DispatcherServlet as front controller -->
	<servlet>
        <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>
                org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet
        </servlet-class>
        <init-param>
       		<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
       		<param-value>/WEB-INF/servlet-context.xml</param-value>
    		</init-param>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>
 
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/</url-pattern> 
    </servlet-mapping>
    
 </web-app>

3. Configure Our Dispatcher servlet configuration File.

In this, we basically need to define the base package that would be used by spring framework to create @Controller beans. In our case this is going to be com.codegigs.app.tutorials.springmvc

Also, we need to define the directories that would be responsible for rendering the view pages. In our case, this is going to be created under the “WEB-INF/views/” directory.

We also Specify that our project supports Annotations for creating controllers .

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans:beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:beans="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

	<!-- DispatcherServlet Context: defines this servlet's request-processing infrastructure -->

	<!-- Enables the Spring MVC @Controller programming model -->
	<annotation-driven />
	<context:component-scan base-package="com.codegigs.app.tutorials.springmvc" />

	<!-- Resolves views selected for rendering by @Controllers to .jsp resources in the /WEB-INF/views directory -->
	<beans:bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
		<beans:property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views/" />
		<beans:property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
	</beans:bean>

</beans:beans>

4. Create Java Class for the @Controller implementation as mentioned in the servlet-context.xml file.

package com.codegigs.app.tutorials.springmvc.controller;


import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.Locale;

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

@Controller
public class WhoAmI {
	/**
	 * Simply selects the home view to render by returning its name.
	 */
	@RequestMapping(value = "/", method = RequestMethod.GET)
	public String home(Locale locale, Model model) {
		System.out.println("Home Page Requested, locale = " + locale);
		Date date = new Date();
		DateFormat dateFormat = DateFormat.getDateTimeInstance(DateFormat.LONG, DateFormat.LONG, locale);

		String formattedDate = dateFormat.format(date);

		model.addAttribute("serverTime", formattedDate);

		return "home";
	}

	@RequestMapping(value ="/whoami",method = RequestMethod.GET)
   public String printHello(ModelMap model) {
      model.addAttribute("whoami", "Hello Spring MVC Framework!");
      return "whoami";
   }
}

5. Create View pages that use JSTL for rendering the final output.

Finally, we will be creating the view pages in the “/WEB-INF/views/” directory that renders all our required JSP pages.

home.jsp

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" prefix="c"%>
<%@ page session="false"%>
<html>
<head>
<title>Home</title>
</head>
<body>

	
<P>The time on the server is ${serverTime}.


	
<form action="whoami" method="get">
		<input type="text" name="userName">
 <input type="submit" value="Login">
	</form>

</body>
</html>

whoami.jsp

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>User Home Page</title>
</head>
<body>

<h3>Hi ${whoami}</h3>

</body>
</html>

6. Final pom.xml file

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
	<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
	<groupId>app.codegigs.tutorials</groupId>
	<artifactId>springmvc</artifactId>
	<packaging>war</packaging>
	<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
	<name>springmvc Maven Webapp</name>
	<url>http://maven.apache.org</url>
	<dependencies>
		<dependency>
			<groupId>junit</groupId>
			<artifactId>junit</artifactId>
			<version>3.8.1</version>
			<scope>test</scope>
		</dependency>
		<!-- Add Spring Web and MVC dependencies -->

		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
			<artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
			<version>4.3.9.RELEASE</version>
		</dependency>
		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
			<artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
			<version>4.3.9.RELEASE</version>
		</dependency>
		<!-- Servlet -->
		<dependency>
			<groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
			<artifactId>servlet-api</artifactId>
			<version>2.5</version>
			<scope>provided</scope>
		</dependency>
		<dependency>
			<groupId>javax.servlet.jsp</groupId>
			<artifactId>jsp-api</artifactId>
			<version>2.1</version>
			<scope>provided</scope>
		</dependency>
		<dependency>
			<groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
			<artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
			<version>1.2</version>
		</dependency>
	</dependencies>
	<build>
		<plugins>
			<plugin>
				<artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
				<version>3.6.1</version>
				<configuration>
					<source>1.8</source>
					<target>1.8</target>
				</configuration>
			</plugin>
			<plugin>
				<artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
				<version>3.0.0</version>
				<configuration>
					<warSourceDirectory>WebContent</warSourceDirectory>
				</configuration>
			</plugin>
		</plugins>
		<finalName>${project.artifactId}</finalName> <!-- added to remove Version from WAR file -->
	</build>
</project>