Spring MVC Hello World Example

There are given 7 steps for creating the spring MVC application. The steps are as follows:

1. Create the request page (optional)
2. Create the controller class
3. Provide the entry of controller in the web.xml file
4. Define the bean in the xml file
5. Display the message in the JSP page
6. Load the spring core and mvc jar files
7. Start server and deploy the project

Step-1: Create the request page (optional)

This is the simple jsp page containing a link. It is optional page. You may direct invoke the action class instead.

index.jsp

                     <a href="hello.html">click</a>

Step-2: Create the controller class

• To create the controller class, we are using two annotations @Controller and @RequestMapping.
• The @Controller annotation marks this class as Controller.
• The @Requestmapping annotation is used to map the class with the specified name.
• This class returns the instance of ModelAndView controller with the mapped name, message name and message value. The message value will be displayed in the jsp page.

HelloWorldController.java

package com.javatpoint;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;

import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;

import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView;

@Controller

public class HelloWorldController {

@RequestMapping("/hello")

public ModelAndView helloWorld() {

String message = "HELLO SPRING MVC HOW R U";

return new ModelAndView("hellopage", "message", message);

}

}

Step-3: Provide the entry of controller in the web.xml file

In this xml file, we are specifying the servlet class DispatcherServlet that acts as the front controller in Spring Web MVC. All the incoming request for the html file will be forwarded to the DispatcherServlet.

web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<web-app version="2.5" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd">

<servlet>

<servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>

<servlet- class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet

-class>

<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>

</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>

<servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>

<url-pattern>*.html</url-pattern>

</servlet-mapping>

</web-app>

Step-4: Define the bean in the xml file

• This is the important configuration file where we need to specify the ViewResolver and View components.
• The context:component-scan element defines the base-package where DispatcherServlet will search the controller class.
• Here, the InternalResourceViewResolver class is used for the ViewResolver.
• The prefix+string returned by controller+suffix page will be invoked for the view component.
• This xml file should be located inside the WEB-INF directory.

spring-servlet.xml

<?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:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context

xsi:schemaLocation="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-context-

3.0.xsd">

<context:component-scan     base-package="com.javatpoint" />

<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalRe sourceViewResolver">

<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/" />

<property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />

</bean>

</beans>

Step-5: Display the message in the JSP page

This is the simple JSP page, displaying the message returned by the Controller. It must be located inside the WEB-INF/jsp directory for this example only.

hellopage.jsp

Message is: ${message}