Spring MVC - Form Handling

Spring MVC - Form Tag library

Spring MVC - Handler Mapping

Spring MVC - Controller

Spring MVC - View Resolver

Spring MVC - Integration

Spring Q & A

Spring - Questions and Answers

Spring MVC Useful Resources

Spring MVC - 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 a <mvc:resources> tag.

To start with, let us have a working Eclipse IDE in place and consider the following steps to develop a Dynamic Form based Web Application using Spring Web Framework −

Step	Description
1	Create a project with a name hello under a package com.tutorialspoint as explained in the Spring MVC - Hello World Example chapter.
2	Create Java class WebController under the com.tutorialspoint package.
3	Create a static file final.htm under the pages sub-folder in WEB-INF folder.
4	The final step is to create the content of 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.GetMapping;

@Controller
public class WebController {

   @GetMapping(value = "/index")
   public String index() {
	   return "index";
   }
   
   @GetMapping(value = "/staticPage")
   public String redirect() {     
      return "redirect:/pages/final.htm";
   }
}

hello-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"
   xmlns:mvc = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
   xsi:schemaLocation = "
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans     
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.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 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, the <mvc:resources..../> tag 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-separated list of values.

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 the 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 = "/hello/staticPage">
         <table>
            <tr>
               <td>
                  <input type = "submit" value = "Get HTML Page"/>
               </td>
            </tr>
         </table>  
      </form:form>
   </body>
</html>

final.htm

<html>
   <head>
      <title>Spring Static Page</title>
   </head>
   <body>
      <h2>A simple HTML page</h2>
   </body>
</html>

Output

Once you are done with creating source and configuration files, export your application. Right click on your application, use Run As → Maven Install option and save your hello.war file in Tomcat's webapps folder.

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

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

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