Spring MVC Hello World Example

The following example shows how to write a simple web-based Hello World application using Spring MVC framework. To start with it, let us have a working Eclipse IDE in place and take the following steps to develop a Dynamic Web Application using Spring Web Framework −

Steps	Description
1	Create a Dynamic Web Project with a name HelloWeb and create a package com.tutorialspoint under the src folder in the created project.
2	Drag and drop below mentioned Spring and other libraries into the folder WebContent/WEB-INF/lib.
3	Create a Java class HelloController under the com.tutorialspoint package.
4	Create Spring configuration files web.xml and HelloWeb-servlet.xml under the WebContent/WEB-INF folder.
5	Create a sub-folder with a name jsp under the WebContent/WEB-INF folder. Create a view file hello.jsp under this sub-folder.
6	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 HelloController.java file

package com.tutorialspoint;

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

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/hello")
public class HelloController {
   @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET)public String printHello(ModelMap model) {
      model.addAttribute("message", "Hello Spring MVC Framework!");
      return "hello";
   }
}

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/XMLSchema-instance"
   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 Application</display-name>

   <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 HelloWeb-servlet.xml

<beans xmlns = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
   xmlns:context = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
   xmlns:xsi = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   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.tutorialspoint" />

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

</beans>

Following is the content of Spring view file hello.jsp

<%@ page contentType = "text/html; charset = UTF-8" %>
<html>
   <head>
      <title>Hello World</title>
   </head>
   
   <body>
      <h2>${message}</h2>
   </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 creating the source and configuration files, export your application. Right-click on your application and use Export > WAR File option and save your HelloWeb.war file in Tomcat's webapps folder.

Now start your Tomcat server and make sure you are able to access other web pages from webapps folder using a standard browser. Try to access the URL http://localhost:8080/HelloWeb/hello and if everything is fine with your Spring Web Application, you should see the following result −

You should note that in the given URL, HelloWeb is the application name and hello is the virtual subfolder which we have mentioned in our controller using @RequestMapping("/hello"). You can use direct root while mapping your URL using @RequestMapping("/"). In this case you can access the same page using short URL http://localhost:8080/HelloWeb/ but it is advised to have different functionalities under different folders.

spring_web_mvc_framework.htm