Spring 5 MVC Java Based Configuration Example

By Atul Rai | Last Updated: September 4, 2018 Previous       Next

In the last two tutorials, we have learned how to create a Spring Web MVC application using XML-based configuration and annotation based configuration. But those tutorials have web.xml and dispatcher-servlet.xml file to initialize the front controller and annotations.

In this tutorial, we will see how to configure a Spring MVC application without using a web.xml and dive into the Java-based configuration.

These annotations will help to create a complete annotation based application.

@Configuration: Treat as the configuration file for Spring MVC-enabled applications.
@EnableWebMvc: Adding this annotation to a configuration class enable the Spring MVC configuration.
@ComponentScan: Scan starts from base package and registers all controllers, service, beans, etc.
@Bean: Indicates that a method produces a bean to be managed by the Spring container.

Technology Used

Find the list of technologies used in this application.

• Eclipse Photon IDE
• Java 8
• Tomcat 9
• Maven 4
• Spring.5.0.2. RELEASE

Dependency Required

To create Spring MVC application, you must need Spring MVC jars in your project build path and Maven is a great tool to do that. Add the following dependency to your pom.xml file.

<dependencies>
	<dependency>
		<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
		<artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
		<version>5.0.2.RELEASE</version>
	</dependency>
</dependencies>

Project Structure

Final project structure of our application in Eclipse IDE will look like as follows.

Let’s start step by step.

Step 1: Replacing web.xml

Create FrontControllerConfig class that extends the AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer and implements its unimplemented methods.

This class is responsible to notify the Spring framework this our front controller i.e. register the DispatcherServlet and use Java-based Spring configuration.

getRootConfigClasses: Paas the Spring MVC configured class name.

getServletMappings: Paas the URL pattern i.e for which specific URL pattern you want to call this controller. In my case, I want to call all URL.

package org.websparrow.config;

import org.springframework.web.servlet.support.AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer;

public class FrontControllerConfig extends AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer {

	@Override
	protected Class<?>[] getRootConfigClasses() {

		return new Class[] { WebMvcConfig.class };
	}

	@Override
	protected Class<?>[] getServletConfigClasses() {

		return null;
	}

	@Override
	protected String[] getServletMappings() {
		return new String[] { "/" };
	}
}

Step 2: Enable Spring Web MVC

Create another class WebMvcConfig and this class will replace the dispatcher-servlet.xml file. This class is responsible for enabling Spring MVC and set the directory location of views and its extension.

package org.websparrow.config;

import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.ComponentScan;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.EnableWebMvc;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver;

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@ComponentScan("org.websparrow.controller")
public class WebMvcConfig {

	@Bean
	public InternalResourceViewResolver viewResolver() {
		InternalResourceViewResolver vr = new InternalResourceViewResolver();

		// set location of views.
		vr.setPrefix("/");

		// set the extension of views.
		vr.setSuffix(".jsp");

		return vr;
	}
}

Step 3: Create Controller Class

Create a HelloController class that handles the user request and return the ModelAndView object.

package org.websparrow.controller;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestParam;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView;

@Controller
public class HelloController {

	@RequestMapping("/hello")
	public ModelAndView greet(@RequestParam("name") String name) {

		ModelAndView mv = new ModelAndView();
		mv.setViewName("welcome");
		mv.addObject("name", name);

		return mv;
	}
}

Step 4: Create Views

index.jsp: This page will take the username and sends a request to the controller.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>

<body>

	<h2>Spring 5 MVC Java Based Configuration Example</h2>
	
	<form action="hello" method="post">

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

	</form>

</body>
</html>

welcome.jsp: This page will greet the user.

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
	pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1" isELIgnored="false"%>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>

	<h2>Hello ${name}</h2>
	<p>Welcome to Spring MVC world.</p>

</body>
</html>

Step 5: Run Application

Now start your tomcat and run the application. You will get the following results.

References

1. DispatcherServlet
2. Web MVC Config
3. Servlet Config