Spring Useful Resources

Spring - Static Pages Example

Quiz

The following example shows how to write a simple web-based application using Spring MVC Framework, which can access static pages along with dynamic pages with the help of <mvc:resources> tag. To start with, let us have a working Eclipse IDE in place and take the following steps to develop a Dynamic Form based Web Application using Spring Web Framework −

Example - Static Pages

Steps	Description
1	Create a Maven project with archetype as maven-archetype-webapp with a name web, groupid com.tutorialspoint, artifactid web and create a package com.tutorialspoint under the src folder in the created project.
2	Update the pom.xml as explained in the Spring - MVC Hello World Example chapter.
3	Create a Java class WebController under the com.tutorialspoint package.
4	Create Spring configuration files web.xml and web-servlet.xml under the WEB-INF folder as explained in the Spring - MVC Hello World Example chapter.
5	Create a sub-folder with a name jsp under the WEB-INF folder. Create a view file index.jsp under this sub-folder.
6	Create a sub-folder with a name pages under the WEB-INF folder. Create a static file final.htm under this sub-folder.
7	The final step is to create the content of all the source and configuration files and export the application as explained below.

WebController.java

package com.tutorialspoint;

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

@Controller
public class WebController {
   @RequestMapping(value = "/index", method = RequestMethod.GET)
   public String index() {
      return "index";
   }
   @RequestMapping(value = "/staticPage", method = RequestMethod.GET)
   public String redirect() {
      return "redirect:/pages/final.htm";
   }
}

web-servlet.xml

Following is the content of another Spring Web configuration file web-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:context = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
   xmlns:mvc = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
   xsi:schemaLocation = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-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 id = "viewResolver" 
      class = "org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
      
      <property name = "prefix" value = "/WEB-INF/jsp/" />
      <property name = "suffix" value = ".jsp" />
   </bean>
    
   <mvc:resources mapping = "/pages/**" location = "/WEB-INF/pages/" />
   <mvc:annotation-driven/>
    
</beans>

Here <mvc:resources..../> is being used to map static pages. The mapping attribute must be an Ant pattern that specifies the URL pattern of an http requests. The location attribute must specify one or more valid resource directory locations having static pages including images, stylesheets, JavaScript, and other static content. Multiple resource locations may be specified using a comma-seperated list of values.

index.jsp

Following is the content of Spring view file WEB-INF/jsp/index.jsp. This will be a landing page; this page will send a request to access staticPage service method, which will redirect this request to a static page available in WEB-INF/pages folder.

index.jsp

<%@taglib uri = "http://www.springframework.org/tags/form" prefix = "form"%>
<html>
   <head>
      <title>Spring Landing Page</title>
   </head>

   <body>
      <h2>Spring Landing Page</h2>
      <p>Click below button to get a simple HTML page</p>
      
      <form:form method = "GET" action = "/web/staticPage">
         <table>
            <tr>
               <td>
                  <input type = "submit" value = "Get HTML Page"/>
               </td>
            </tr>
         </table>  
      </form:form>
   </body>
   
</html>

final.htm

Following is the content of Spring view file WEB-INF/pages/final.htm.

<html>
   <head>
      <title>Spring Static Page</title>
   </head>

   <body>
      <h2>A simple HTML page</h2>
   </body>
</html>

Output

Once you are done creating the source and configuration files, export your application. Right-click on your application and use run as > maven install > option and save your web.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. Now try to access the URL http://localhost:8080/web/index. If everything is fine with your Spring Web Application, you should see the following result −

Click the "Get HTML Page" button to access a static page mentioned in staticPage service method. If everything is fine with your Spring Web Application, you should see the following result.

spring_web_mvc_framework.htm

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