Basic view resolution in Spring MVC

Question

I'm just checking out Spring MVC framework, so I'm new to it, pls forgive the basic question. But I'm trying to figure out how the view resolver works.

I created a basic controller method to add a user like this:

 @RequestMapping(value = "/add", method = RequestMethod.POST)
    public String addUser(@ModelAttribute("user") User user, BindingResult result) {
        logger.entry(user, result);
        userRepository.save(user);

        String returnString="redirect:members/confirmation";
        logger.exit(returnString);
        return returnString;
    }

I want it to redirect to the members/confirmation.jsp page under the WEB-INF/pages folder. It's just a simple JSP that says "thanks for registering". The redirect is so it won't allow form double posting. (This is just a basic test app)

I configured the internalviewresolver in the mvc-dispatcher-servlet.xml configuration file:

 <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
        <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/pages/"/>
        <property name="suffix" value=".jsp"/>
        <property name="order" value="0"/>
    </bean>

But it's not resolving to the confirmation view, and just 404's.

What am I missing here?

Thanks!

Rich

You're confising redirect and forward. redirect means sending a response to the browser, asking it to send back a request to another location. What you want is a forward. Don't use the redirect: prefix. — JB Nizet, Jul 05 '14 at 07:01
redirect is the recommended method to stop duplicate form submission issues right? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2324931/duplicate-form-submission-in-spring — Richard G, Jul 05 '14 at 07:50
The POST-REDIRECT-GET pattern is indeed a good idea to implement. But then you must redirect to the URL of a resource accessible from the outside, and not to a view. The path after the `redirect:` prefix must be the path to one of your controller methods, accessible using a GET request: once you've created a user, you redirect to the URL allowing to list all the users for example, or to the URL allowing to view the created user details. — JB Nizet, Jul 05 '14 at 08:02
ok cool, is there a way to neatly resolve the path to the jsp through convention rather than writing a controller method? So if I request "/users/confirmation" on a GET it will automatically resolve to "/users/confirmation.jsp". (I've been working with Rails which is pretty good at these type of conventions) — Richard G, Jul 05 '14 at 08:14
I don't understand what you're asking. Why would you not want to go through a controller? Spring MVC is named MVC for a good reason. Where would the view get the model it needs to display if the request doesn't go through a controller? — JB Nizet, Jul 05 '14 at 08:17

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 05 '14 at 14:35

Returning "redirect:members/confirmation" does a client-side redirect to members/confirmation (to this relative URL). Your application does not respond to HTTP requests to members/confirmation at the moment. Create a controller for this URI with your target JSP page as the view:

@RequestMapping(value = "/members/confirmation", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public String confirmation() {

     return "members/confirmation";
}

It's the only right way to do it.

Basic view resolution in Spring MVC

1 Answers1