Expert Spring MVC and Web Flow phần 5 pot

YesIs form bean in session?Yes Create form object Create and init binder No Create NewForm object Create and init binder No No Remove from session Bind request parameters to form object

This controller has a complex work flow, and we will break it down into its core nents Then, we will show you the best extension points for altering the work flow in the

compo-controller We begin by illustrating all possible paths through the compo-controller

Figure 6-1 illustrates the many paths through the work flow of handling forms withSimpleFormController

Figure 6-1.SimpleFormController activity diagram

We will focus on the initial retrieval of the HTML form first The controller uses themethod isFormSubmission() to determine if the HTTP request is either a form viewing or

form submission The default implementation of this method merely checks the HTTP

method, and if it is a POST then isFormSubmission() returns true The controller does not

consider a HTTP GET request a form submission However, this method is not final, so your

implementation is free to define whatever criteria is appropriate to indicate the request

should be treated as a submission If indeed the request is not a form submission, the

Resource requested

Retrieve form object from session Everything from AbstractController

Is a form submission?Yes Is a session form? YesIs form bean in session?Yes

Create form object

Create and init binder

No

Create NewForm object

Create and init binder

No No

Remove from session

Bind request parameters to form object Bind to form object

Store form in session

Should bind on NewForm?

Collect reference data No

Is a session form?

Display form view

Handle form submit No

Errors from binding or validation?

Yes

Done

controller will then consider this request as the first of two requests (the second being theactual form submission) It will create an instance of the form object (a.k.a command bean)using the formBackingObject() method By default, this method will return an instance of theclass specified with setCommandClass() The formBackingObject() method is not final, so youwill use this method to configure, if necessary, the form object class, possibly setting anydependencies or properties This is the time to manipulate the form object before it enters the work flow.

Once the instance of the form object is ready, the controller then creates the DataBinderand calls the initBinder() life cycle method Override this method to register any customPropertyEditors required when binding to the form object By default, this method does nothing

Now that the DataBinder instance is ready, you have the choice of performing a bindingusing any parameters sent with this initial HTTP GET request This action is determined by thebindOnNewFormproperty, enabled by (you guessed it) calling the setBindOnNewForm() method.Typically, on the first view of a form, no parameters have been sent with the request, so it is safe

to leave bindOnNewForm equal to false (the default) However, if you set the property to true,and any errors occurred from the binding process, those errors will be available to the initialform view

The SimpleFormController has the ability to store the form object in the session for theduration of the controller’s work flow That is, the form will live in the session between the ini-tial form view and the form submission To enable this feature, simply call setSessionForm()with a value of true Once the form object has been created, and after it is possibly bound bythe DataBinder, it will be stored in the session if this property is true

If you load the form bean from persistence using an object-relational mapping (ORM) tool,you may find the session form functionality useful Many ORM tools support the concept ofreattaching, or merging, a detached bean back into persistence If you require this type of behav-ior, using the session form functionality is a nice way to load the form bean only once duringinitial form view That same instance will then be used during the form submission stage, avoid-ing the need to pull the instance from persistence again Most persistence strategies can handlepulling the instance twice (once on form view and once on form submission), so weigh the proswith the cons of increased memory usage for the session, among other issues

■ Caution Storing the form in the session should not be chosen lightly if the application is to be clustered.Typically, in a clustered environment, session data is serialized and often replicated among different nodes inthe cluster Serialization is a costly procedure, and it can place a heavy burden on cluster bandwidth Checkwith your application server’s clustering strategies, and be sure to understand the impact of session storage

At this point, the form view is about to be returned to the user Before the view is dered, the referenceData() callback is called This life cycle method allows you to assembleand return any auxiliary objects required to render the view The form object will automati-cally be sent to the form view, so use this method to put anything else into the model the form page might need By default, this method does not manipulate the model in any way

ren-If you’ve made it this far, the Controller will assemble the full model with the form object,any possible errors from potential binding, and the model from referenceData() It will then

send this combined model to the View named by the formView property This is the name of theViewthat contains the actual HTML form

Form Submission with SimpleFormController

The SimpleFormController has completed half of its job by displaying the HTML form to the

user Once the user hits the submit button of the form, the SimpleFormController roars back

to life to handle the submission It will bind the request parameters to the form bean, validate

the bean, and choose to show either the original form again if there were errors or the form

success view if everything worked as expected We will walk you through this process now,

pointing out the useful life cycle callback methods along the way

The first method in this controller that determines the form bean’s fate is again theisFormSubmission()method Your HTML forms should use the POST method for form submis-

sions for both technical (it can handle much more data) and architectural (POST actions are

intrinsically non-idempotent) reasons Also, the default implementation of isFormSubmission()

returns true if the action is a POST You are free to override this method to further define what a

form submission looks like, but the default should work fine for most situations

In this case, because we are tracking the form submission work flow, this method willreturn true The SimpleFormController will now check whether or not the form bean is stored

in the session, via the isSessionForm() method If the form bean is stored in the session, then

the Controller will retrieve the form bean, put there originally when the user viewed the form

The Controller then removes the form bean from the session, as it is likely the form bean will

be successfully submitted during this work flow (thus no longer needed in the session) If, in

fact, there are errors during the submission process, the form bean will be placed back into

the session later

If the form bean was not stored in the session, then the controller will simply createanother instance of the form bean using the formBackingObject() method This is the same

method used to create the form bean during the initial form view

■ Tip If your form bean requires dependencies to be injected by Spring’s ApplicationContext, overriding

formBackingObject()provides the opportunity to request the bean from the BeanFactory Of course, to

avoid having to manually pull the bean using the getBean()method on the BeanFactoryyou can use

Spring’s support for method injection (refer to Pro Spring by Rob Harrop and Jan Machacek (Apress, 2005)

for more information) In any case, don’t restrict your form beans to simple POJOs as you may use Spring’s

dependency injection for your form beans quite easily

At this point, the form bean instance has been obtained The Controller now creates theDataBinderand calls the initBinder() callback method As with the work flow for viewing

the form, use this method to register any custom PropertyEditors you need during binding

With the form bean created, and the DataBinder created with custom PropertyEditors tered, the request parameters are now bound to the form bean The binding process will alsocapture any binding errors, such as type conversion errors or any configured required fields.

regis-Of course, most forms require more complicated validation than what is provided

by the DataBinder At this point in the work flow, the Controller consults the method

isValidateOnBinding()to determine if it should now run the form bean through the

Validators This method defaults to true, and it is marked final so the only way to change its behavior is through setValidateOnBinding()

If your situation requires a more exact control over when validation is performed after abinding, you may override the suppressValidation() method While this method defaults tofalse, this method allows you to choose on a request-by-request basis whether or not to runthrough the validators

By default, the controller will allow each configured validator to validate the form bean.After all the validators have run, the controller will then call the onBindAndValidate() life cyclemethod This callback method is your chance to perform any custom validation logic or gen-eral logic after binding and validation

■ Note The onBindAndValidate()method will run even if suppressValidation()returns trueor if

isValidateOnBinding()returns false In other words,onBindAndValidate()will always run, even ifvalidation did not

After onBindAndValidate() runs, the Controller makes a decision based on whether anyerrors exist These errors would have resulted from the binding process or through automaticvalidation or custom validation in onBindAndValidate() If there are any errors, the Controllerthen begins the process of displaying the original form If no errors exist, then the form beancan finally be processed

If errors are present and the isSessionForm() method returns true, then the form bean isplaced back into the session Remember that the form bean is removed from the session at thebeginning of the form submission handling work flow However, when there are errors, theoriginal form is displayed again, and so the form bean is stored in the session again to bebound again once the errors are addressed by the user The referenceData() method is calledonce more to populate the model with objects for the form Finally, the form view is displayedagain, with the errors and the form bean

If there are no errors, the controller then calls the onSubmit() life cycle method This nals that the form bean is ready to be processed There are several overloaded onSubmit()methods, each method simply calling the other with one fewer method argument This flow,illustrated in Figure 6-2, is arranged this way to allow you to pick the method with the exactnumber of parameters you will need to process the form There is no need to implement allonSubmit()methods; just choose the one that will work for you

sig-There is also a very simple doSubmitAction(), which is the most simple callback method

to override and implement If you do not implement any of the onSubmit() methods, you willneed to implement this method This method simply provides the form bean to be processed.You may use this method when there is no model to construct and when the default successview is appropriate If you need to construct a model, or if you need to choose the view toshow dynamically, implement one of the onSubmit() methods

Figure 6-2.Order in which callback methods are called

■ Tip Choose the best form submit callback to implement based on which objects you need and whether

the default success view is always appropriate Implement only one callback method

SimpleFormController Examples

It is time to see the SimpleFormController in action To begin, we will create a form for a

sim-ple person This examsim-ple brings together what we have covered from the DataBinder and the

work flow of the SimpleFormController

The Person class used in this example (shown in Listing 6-39) has three properties: a Name,when he was born, and his favorite programming language To make things more interesting,

the name property is an example of a nested Name object (shown in Listing 6-40), and the bornOn

property will require a custom PropertyEditor

Listing 6-39.Person Bean

public class Person {

private Name name = new Name();

private Date bornOn;

private String favoriteProgrammingLanguage;

public Date getBornOn() {return bornOn;

}public void setBornOn(Date bornOn) {this.bornOn = bornOn;

public String getFavoriteProgrammingLanguage() {return favoriteProgrammingLanguage;

}public void setFavoriteProgrammingLanguage(String favoriteProgrammingLanguage) {this.favoriteProgrammingLanguage = favoriteProgrammingLanguage;

}public Name getName() {return name;

}public void setName(Name name) {this.name = name;

}

@Overridepublic String toString() {StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();

Listing 6-40.Name Bean

public class Name {

private String first;

private String last;

public String getFirst() {return first;

}public void setFirst(String first) {this.first = first;

}public String getLast() {return last;

}public void setLast(String last) {this.last = last;

}

@Overridepublic String toString() {

return first + " " + last;

}}

Listing 6-41 contains the XHTML that matches the Person object, while Figure 6-3 showshow the form is rendered Note that Listing 6-41 deliberately omits the use of the <spring:bind>

tags, in order to illustrate the raw XHTML required This is the XHTML as the browser would see

it Obviously, this also illustrates that the use of <spring:bind> and related tags are not required,

though they are recommended for any real projects

Listing 6-41.XHTML Form for Person

<td>Favorite Programming Language:</td>

<td><input type="text" name="favoriteProgrammingLanguage" /></td>

Figure 6-3.Initial form view

The XHTML shown in Listing 6-41 has some interesting aspects First, notice that we areusing the POST method for the form This should be the preferred method for form submis-sions, as discussed earlier Second, notice how we used action="" instead of specifying aparticular URI This is a convenience trick to avoid specifying the page’s URI, which wouldtightly couple the page to the URI that indicates it By not specifying an action, the browserwill submit the form back to the originating URI (which, in the case of SimpleFormController,

is just what we want) Lastly, notice how the form input element names correspond to theproperty names from the Person object This should be familiar from the discussion about the DataBinder

Next, we show the SimpleFormController implementation (Listing 6-42) for the form inListing 6-41 For our example, it will simply print out the Person via toString(), but it’s easy toimagine using a data access object to persist the person

Listing 6-42.PersonFormController

public class PersonFormController extends SimpleFormController {

public PersonFormController() {setCommandName("person");

ServletRequestDataBinder binder) throws Exception {binder.registerCustomEditor(Date.class,

new CustomDateEditor(new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd"), false));}

@Override

protected void doSubmitAction(Object command) throws Exception {Person person = (Person) command;

// persist the object, or some other business logic}

}

The bornOn parameter of the Person object is of type java.util.Date, so we are required

to use a custom PropertyEditor to convert the string parameter into a true Date object This

Controllerrelies on the default behavior of forwarding to the successView once the form is

submitted, so we chose to implement doSubmitAction() because it requires the least amount

of code

By default, the form bean will placed into the model on successful form submission

Therefore, the form success view can access the form bean with the identifier set via

setCommandName() The following XHTML page (Listing 6-43) shows this in action

Listing 6-43.newPersonSuccess XHTML Page

Listing 6-43’s JSP page will render the following result to the browser (Figure 6-4)

Figure 6-4.Form success view

The Controller in this example is using logical View names to identify which views should berendered This provides a nice decoupling between the controller and how the Views are actuallyimplemented The DispatcherServlet will delegate these View names to a ViewResolver to resolvethe actual View instances For our example, we will use an InternalResourceViewResolver ThisViewResolver works well with JSP files and lets us hide the actual JSP files behind the /WEB-INFdirectory to prohibit unauthorized client access.

■ Tip You should place any restricted or otherwise hidden files inside the /WEB-INFdirectory of your webapplication That directory, and all of its subdirectories, is protected by the servlet container

The ViewResolver is declared and configured with a prefix and suffix, used to create a fullyqualified filename for the view This bean definition (Listing 6-44) will typically reside in thespring-servlet.xmlfile with the rest of the controller definitions and other web-specific beans

Listing 6-44.ViewResolver Configuration

<bean id="jspViewResolver"

class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">

<property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView"/>

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

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

First, we will create the list of approved languages to pick a favorite from For the example,the List’s contents are static, so we will create a simple array to be shared among requests

It is common to require objects from persistence to be returned by referenceData() Ifthat information is static, for performance reasons, load the objects only once at startup Thiswill save on pulling them from the database for every request In this case, your controller mayimplement InitializingBean, which is a Spring-specific interface indicating that the beanrequires initializing before servicing requests

■ Tip For more information about the InitializingBeaninterface, consult the book Pro Spring or the

online documentation An alternative to InitializingBeanis the init-methodattribute in the XML beandefinition, which avoids the need to implement a framework interface

Listing 6-45 contains the entire PersonFormController code, highlighting the referenceData()method.

Listing 6-45.PersonFormController with Reference Data

public class PersonFormController extends SimpleFormController {

private String[] languages = new String[]{"Java", "Ruby", "Python"};

public PersonFormController() {setCommandName("person");

data.put("languages", languages);

return data;

}

@Overrideprotected void initBinder(HttpServletRequest request,

ServletRequestDataBinder binder) throws Exception {binder.registerCustomEditor(Date.class,

new CustomDateEditor(new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd"), false));

}

@Overrideprotected void doSubmitAction(Object command) throws Exception {Person person = (Person) command;

For example, we will extend our PersonFormController to persist the person instance intothe database, and we will recommend a book to read based on their favorite programminglanguage We will remove our doSubmitAction() method and override onSubmit() so that wemay return a model with the book recommendation, as shown in Listing 6-47.

Listing 6-47.PersonFormController with onSubmit()

public class PersonFormController extends SimpleFormController {

private String[] languages = new String[]{"Java", "Ruby", "Python"};

private PersonDao personDao;

public PersonFormController() {setCommandName("person");

throws Exception {Map<String, String[]> data = new HashMap<String, String[]>();

data.put("languages", languages);

return data;

}

@Overrideprotected void initBinder(HttpServletRequest request,

ServletRequestDataBinder binder) throws Exception {binder.registerCustomEditor(Date.class,

new CustomDateEditor(new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd"), false));

}

@Overrideprotected ModelAndView onSubmit(Object command) throws Exception {Person person = (Person) command;

As you may have noticed, the controller now delegates persistence to a PersonDao class

Thus, a setter method is provided, setPersonDao(), so that the ApplicationContext can easily

inject an instance

The old doSubmitAction() is now replaced with the more flexible onSubmit() method,allowing us to return a ModelAndView object Notice how we simply call getSuccessView() to

return the configured success view We are also now required to manually add the person

object into the model, which was previously automatically added

■ Tip If you return nullfrom onSubmit(), a default ModelAndViewwill be created with getSuccessView()

All objects in the model are exposed to the View instance, so the success view XHTMLpage can now easily display the recommended book, as shown in Listing 6-48.

Listing 6-48.XHTML for Recommended Book Title

<body>

Welcome, ${person.name}! You chose ${person.favoriteProgrammingLanguage}

as your favorite programming language Therefore, we can recommend you

check out ${suggestedBook}

</body>

Redirect After Submit Pattern

There is a common problem with the way we are handling the display of the confirmationpage, which needs to be fixed The success view is rendered in the same request as the initialPOST, leaving the browser in a state with the ability to replay the form submit In other words,after the success view is shown, the user can simply reload the page, resubmitting the form.This can lead to inconsistencies, with the best-case scenario of a confused user and a worst-case scenario of multiple identical Person instances being saved into the database

Any form that alters data in persistence, or performs any type of potentially destructiveoperation, is at risk of being resubmitted Multiple solutions exist that can ensure that the usermust view the form before submitting, thus preventing double submissions We will cover one

of the most common solutions, the Redirect After Submit pattern, in the next example Thispattern simply redirects the user to the success view instead of internally forwarding therequest The redirect forces the browser to obtain a new page, and any reloads will now safelyreload the new page instead of the form page

■ Caution A client redirect is not the same as a RequestDispatcher.forward()or RequestDispatcher.include() These two methods internally redirect a request to another handler inside the servlet container

A client redirect instructs the client to issue another GET request

This pattern is implemented via browser redirects, which are initiated from the server andare built into the HTTP protocol This means this technique can be used independent of theview technologies used To initiate a client redirect, the server will send a 302 response code(or 303 if HTTP/1.1 only) plus a Location: header to the client The HTTP response code 302indicates that a resource4 has temporarily moved or that the browser should look elsewherefor the resource When the browser encounters a 302, it will look for a Location: header toindicate where the resource can now be found

4 More accurately, that the representation of the resource has moved

■ Tip For the exact differences between 302 and 303 response codes, please consult the HTTP RFC at

http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html The 303 response code was added to

HTTP/1.1 specifically for the redirect after post pattern, but is only understood by HTTP/1.1 clients Luckily,

most HTTP/1.1 clients will treat a 302 response identically to a 303

There are at least three different ways to accomplish a client redirect with Spring MVCand the Servlet API The first method, HttpServletResponse.sendRedirect(), uses the Servlet

API to correctly send the redirect response You may use this method only if the response has

not been committed, however

Spring MVC treats redirects as just another type of view with its org.springframework

web.servlet.view.RedirectViewclass This class encapsulates the redirect, the conversion of

model objects to query parameters, and the logic to handle a HTTP/1.0 or HTTP/1.1 redirect

This view is then resolved like all other Views in the system, hiding the exact view details from

the controller

While the RedirectView is very simple to use, if your application is already using anInternalResourceViewResolver, you will need to create another view resolver that is able to

resolve non-file system views Because we already have an InternalResourceViewResolver

configured, we will need to chain the ViewrResolvers allowing each the chance to resolve the

view name Once a resolver is able to handle the View name, resolving stops and the view

instance is returned

To handle a RedirectView, we will define an XmlViewResolver (Listing 6-49), which reads its list of view names from a Spring XML file This ViewResolver will be defined inside

spring-servlet.xml alongside the InternalResourceViewResolver The XmlViewResolver,

however, will be configured to appear before the InternalResourceViewResolver in the chain,

so that it has a chance to resolve the view names first We also specify where the resolver will

find its configuration (in this case, in /WEB-INF/views.xml)

Listing 6-49.Two View Resolvers, Chained

<bean id="jspViewResolver"

class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">

<property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView"/>

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

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

</bean>

<bean id="auxViewResolver"

class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.XmlViewResolver">

<property name="order" value="1"/>

<property name="location" value="/WEB-INF/views.xml"/>

</bean>

Now it is simply a matter of defining the RedirectView instance in views.xml (as shown

in Listing 6-50) The bean’s name will match the view name the controller is using (i.e., newPersonSuccess) We are setting contextRelative to true so that the RedirectView willprepend the context path name for the web application to the URL value

<property name="contextRelative" value="true" />

<property name="url" value="/personSuccess" />

</bean>

</beans>

One of the benefits of the RedirectView is that it will convert each object from the modeland place them in the query string of the full URL However, for this to work correctly, thoseobjects are converted to Strings Therefore, if you will be using the RedirectView with objects

in the model, ensure that the next page expects only Strings from the model We will nowslightly modify our Controller (as shown in Listing 6-51), explicitly adding each property wewill need for the success page

Listing 6-51.Modified onSubmit Using Only Strings in the Model

Map<String, Object> model = new HashMap<String, Object>();

to the next page via the query string, such as /personSuccess?personName=joe&suggestedBook=titleautomatically by the RedirectView

Listing 6-52.New Success Page Text

Welcome, ${param.personName}! You chose ${param.personFavoriteProgrammingLanguage}

as your favorite programming language Therefore, we can recommend you

check out ${param.suggestedBook}

And finally, we will add a Controller to handle the new success page Why do we need aControllerfor a simple JSP page? A Controller can hide the implementation of the View from

the client, and it provides a uniform URL address space For consistency’s sake, it’s a good idea

to front even simple Views with a Controller As you’ll see, Spring MVC make this a

straight-forward process

The view name newPersonSuccess is now being used for the redirect view, which redirects to the controller identified by /personSuccess In this case, we simply wish to

display the success message so we aren’t interested in coding up a Controller just to forward

to a JSP page Luckily, Spring MVC provides an org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc

UrlFilenameViewControllerthat can convert the last part of the request URL to a view name

This avoids the need to write a custom Controller for resources that are only implemented

as Views

For instance, given the URL /app/address.x, the UrlFilenameViewController will convertthe URL into the view name address This is a very easy way to expose View resources such as

JSP pages while continuing to hide their implementation technology

■ Tip For resources that are only views, hide them behind simple controllers such as

UrlFilenameViewControlleror ParameterizableViewController This hides implementation

revealing clues, such as the jsp extension, and can provide a uniform URL address space This also allows

you to place your view files in the protected /WEB-INFdirectory

For the example, we now add the bean definition for the /personSuccess resource (shown

in Listing 6-53), which the client will be redirected to upon successful form submission This

definition should go in spring-servlet.xml with the other web-specific beans

Listing 6-53./personSuccess Bean Definition

pro-the configuration of an explicit XmlViewResolver The UrlBasedViewResolver (pro-the superclass for

InternalResourceViewResolver) recognizes the special prefix redirect:, which simply triggers a

client redirect instead of being resolved through the standard process

Converting the PersonFormController to use this shorthand is quite easy, and involvesmostly deleting code we just created The Controller’s success view name will now be changed

to use the redirect: prefix (as shown in Listing 6-54), alleviating the need for a RedirectView

definition or an XmlViewResolver definition

Listing 6-54.Person Controller Constructor with Redirect:Pprefix

Redirect After Submit Summary

The redirect after submit pattern, sometimes known as redirect after POST, is a method to

pro-tect the client from resubmitting a form By sending a HTTP redirect, the client is sent to adifferent page after the form is submitted, effectively leaving the original form’s page Anyattempts to reload the page will simple reload the success page instead of the original form

MultiActionController

SimpleFormControlleris great when you need to model a form work flow with one page viewand one form submission There are, however, some situations where you might want oneControllerto handle more than one work flow For instance, you may have a logical group ofread-only operations, and subclassing an AbstractController for each operation might be abit verbose for your application The MultiActionController provides a way to group multipleactions, or request handlers, together in one controller

The benefits of the MultiActionController include

• fewer physical controllers, thus fewer classes in the system

• logical grouping of actions in one class

• flexible mapping for action methods

The disadvantages of MultiActionController include

• form handling work flow isn’t explicit, unlike SimpleFormController

• possibility for large, confusing controllers handling many tasks

• no compile-time checks can be performed due to the use of reflection

So when does using MultiActionController make sense? We believe it is a perfect way toconsolidate actions that have a similar theme into one controller, when those actions do notrequire a full form handling work flow It’s also useful when the actual processing is performed

by a shared delegate However, be wary of putting too many request handling methods insideone MultiActionController, for it can quickly become too large and unwieldy

■ Note The MultiActionControlleris similar in nature to Struts’ DispatchAction, only much moreflexible

The MultiActionController has the following capabilities:

• flexible action method mapping, defaulting to URL to method name mapping

• command bean binding

• support for one or more Validators

• per-action “last modified” timestamp control

• exception handling

■ Caution Even though this Controllersupports Validators and command bean binding, it does not

define a form handling work flow

On initialization, this class searches all of its methods for any that conform to the requesthandler signature Any method that will handle a request must conform to the following

features:

• returns ModelAndView

• accepts an HttpServletRequest as a first parameter

• accepts an HttpServletResponse as a second parameter

• optionally, accept either an HttpSession or an Object (to be treated as the commandbean) as a third parameter

■ Note The name of the method does not matter when locating potential request handling methods

Listing 6-55 contains a simple MultiActionController with three different but validrequest handling methods

Listing 6-55.Example Request Handling Method Signature

public class MyMultiController extends MultiActionController {

public ModelAndView doStuff(HttpServletRequest req,HttpServletResponse res) { … }

public ModelAndView doOtherStuff(HttpServletRequest req,HttpServletResponse res, HttpSession session) { … }public ModelAndView doStuff(HttpServletRequest req,HttpServletResponse res, CommandBean command) { … }}

Now the question becomes, how does MultiActionController know which method

to call when it handles a request? This decision process is encapsulated into the strategyMethodNameResolver, whose job it is to take an HttpServletRequest and return a method name as a String

If the method names in your controller vary in a uniform way from the URL path section,then a prefix or suffix can be configured For instance, if your method name is dodelete, butyou want to continue to use /app/account/delete.x, then you can configure the prefix prop-erty of InternalPathMethodNameResolver to equal “do.”

Because this strategy is the default, no configuration is required if you choose to use it.However, if you want to configure a prefix or suffix, then you will have to specify its bean defi-nition Listing 6-56 contains a sample configuration

Listing 6-56.Example Configuration of an InternalPathMethodNameResolver

<property name="methodNameResolver" ref="methodNameResolver" />

<property name="accountService" ref="accountService" />

</bean>

ParameterMethodNameResolver

If you are looking for behavior that matches Struts’ DispatchAction, then you can use theorg.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.multiaction.ParameterMethodNameResolver Thisstrategy actually is a combination of two separate strategies, both looking at request parame-ters for method name resolution

The first strategy will look for a parameter by name, and its value will be treated as themethod name By default, the name of the parameter is action, but you can change it by call-ing setParamName() Unlike InternalPathMethodNameResolver, there are no prefix and suffixcapabilities, so the value of the action parameter must match exactly the method name.The second strategy is to look for the mere presence of a request parameter, whose namewill point to the method name The ParameterMethodNameResolver will look for any parameterwhose name is found in the methodParamNames array, and the first match wins

■ Tip The second strategy will take precedence over the first, even if the first successfully resolves a match.

Over time, code gets refactored and URL links change, so the ParameterMethodNameResolversupports a mapping between request parameter and the true method name found in the con-

troller The strategy includes a logicalMappings java.util.Properties, containing a map

between the request parameter name or value and the actual method name This can come

in very handy if you do not wish to expose real method names to the view layer

Finally, this ParameterMethodNameResolver can be configured with a default method name,

if no other method name can be resolved To configure a default method name, configure the

does not matter when using the methodParamNames matching strategy, as only the presence of

the parameter is what matters

PropertiesMethodNameResolver

A third option for method name resolution is the org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc

multiaction.PropertiesMethodNameResolver, which happens to be the most flexible of the

strategies As its name implies, the mapping is done via java.util.Properties, with URL

paths acting as keys and the values as method names The URL path can use the same

Ant-style pattern matching you’ve seen with other URL path matching strategies

This strategy will first attempt an exact match on the URL path, excluding the web appcontact name and the servlet mapping, but including the mapping for the Controller If this

exact match does not work, all the mappings will be attempted in iteration order through the

Propertiesinstance until a match is found