I created a Spring MVC project using a template that is created from the STS and this is what is generated in the controller:
#RequestMapping(value = "/", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public String home(Locale locale, Model model) {
//stuff
}
My question is, how does the locale and model variable get passed into the home method?
Also, what are the possible options for the objects that can be passed to the method?
The general answer is "Spring magic"; however, "Supported handler method arguments and return types" in the MVC chapter of the Spring reference guide has the exact answers to your questions.
The technical answer is through the use of SpringMVC HandlerAdapter mechanism.
By way of spring's DispatcherServlet, a Handler adapter is created and configured for each dispatched request.
I think the "spring magic" in this case is the AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter located in the spring mvc packages. This adapter basically will be "mapped" to an HTTP request based on HTTP paths, HTTP methods and request parameters tied to the request.
So essentialy when the spring dispatcher servlet identifies a request with path "/", it will check for methods in it's container annotated with the RequestMapping annotation.
In your case it find's it...
Then the real magic begins...
Using java reflection, Spring will then resolve the arguments of your controller method. So in your case the Locale and model will automatically be passed to you. If you included another web like parameter, such as HttpSession, that will be passed to you.
Related
I bumped into an answer about the usage of #ModelAttribute on spring MVC here on stackoverflow, and learned that it was not actually required to be added into the method's parameter.
I looked for some controllers from our old project, deleted the annotation, and surprisingly the application still runs flawlessly without the #ModelAttribute. Please see example below:
#RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST, value = "/audit/filter")
public String getAuditLogsWithFilter(Model model, AuditLogFilter auditLogFilter, BindingResult bindingResult)
I have read some articles about it but I can not grasp onto why #ModelAttribute is used for some method parameters particularly for spring controllers.
Can anybody provide a simple explanation into why that is? Or can someone enumerate some cases into which I should add the #ModelAttribute annotation to my parameter object?
as described in the official document, it's optional:
Note that using #ModelAttribute is optional (for example, to set its attributes). By default, any argument that is not a simple value type (as determined by BeanUtils#isSimpleProperty) and is not resolved by any other argument resolver is treated as if it were annotated with #ModelAttribute.
I recently added AOP with aspectJ and spring-aop to my existent spring project. The goal was to actually intercept controller calls to modify the response they send back, in order to bind some values to this response I didn't want to add manually to each and everyone of my controllers, for example the expiration date of the actual token used by the end-user (which I wasn't even able to showcase within my controller in any case). I actually managed to get it working until I started my unit tests :
In my unit tests I call directly my controller methods using Reflection feature from java, then replicate usual process (calling the filter chain, pre handler and post handlers, and the controller method itself which is first manually validated using spring validator when annotation #Valid is present on one of my parameters. All this process works fine and gets executed properly). The problem is that now that the controller method is intercepted by spring-aop, it's mentionned as coming from the proxy controller created, and all of my parameters annotations disapear. Here is a controller example :
#Override
public ResponseEntity<Object> editPassword(#Valid #RequestBody PasswordEditForm passwordEditForm, HttpServletRequest request) {
return factorizedUserBaseController.editPassword(passwordEditForm, request, User.class);
}
the parameter PasswordEditForm has the annotation #Valid so in my test cases it was first validated before any other step, but now as I double checked it, the #Valid annotation is not present on the proxy method, and therefore the parameter doesn't get validated, any clue for how to fix this and make my parameters annotation still understandable from my test point of view?
Note : when running the spring through mvn spring-boot:run, parameters with #Valid annotation gets correctly validated and then goes to my error handler method properly.
Problem Solved : from several other stackoverflow posts I understand that CGLIB (aop proxy lib used by Spring) doesn't support annotations. ( see Retain annotations on CGLIB proxies?). But my problem wasn't here, I was literally sure I was finding the method using the controller class itself (the one I coded) but what I was wrong about is that I was giving the controller instance as a parameter to some other parts of my code which in turn would use this controller class to find the method which of course wasn't working because thanks to Spring proxies, it wasn't anymore my controller itself but a proxy class extending my own controller class. Instead, I just had to replace :
Class<?> controllerClass = controllerInstanciationContainer
.getController()
.getClass();
with
Class<?> controllerClass = controllerInstanciationContainer
.getController()
.getClass()
.getSuperclass();
lately I was trying to understand how spring processes #Valid annotation. For example look at the following controller's method:
#RequestMapping(value = "/create", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public ModelAndView createEmployee(#Valid EmployeeForm form, Errors errors) {
if(errors.hasErrors()) {
//validation errors
}
//method code
}
I am struggling to understand how errors instance is getting populated with validation errors in real-time. Does Spring, during compilation of the controller, inject code responsible for validation at the beginning of the createEmployee method? If so how this code would look?
I really tried to find an example of how this validation is performed in real life but it's just impossible. Help me please.
Everything happens at runtime. See the reference for more details on doing validation or this post for extra explanations.
Basically this is part of how Spring works internally. When you start your application Spring registers some beans, bean processors, can scan your classpath for annotated classes, registers those found annotated classes, builds proxies for some of them etc and uses all of them to build a context.
When handling a request, the request is handled on some predetermined execution path that starts with the DispatcherServlet, picking up other beans from the context as needed to handle the request (like validation for example) then forwarding to you controller in the createEmployee (which was registered as startup because Spring found your #RequestMapping annotations on your controller). When you return from the method the flow continues by building a model, selecting a view to display and then generating the response to the client.
For your example, Spring basically finds the #Valid annotation, looks for an already configured validator (configured by you or by a provided implementation for e.g. JSR-303), runs the validator and stores the validation result inside the Errors object. It does this when the request is processed, as mentioned above, it does not generate code.
If your question is to know exactly how Spring does this, in all it's details, you could take the Spring source code and have a look/debug it.
I came across authentication code in my company's java code. The application is a set of several REST services built on Spring MVC. There is a method that gets called in one of the authentication services on the HttpServletRequest object called getHeader(). And the method retrieves an AuthId. Why would they use HttpServletRequest in a spring MVC application? What are the benefits of using this servlet type code in the spring app? What would this method do? Any alternatives?
Spring MVC provides a lot of fabulous abstractions on top of HttpServletRequest, so you can avoid its low-level implementation details. You rarely need to access it directly.
For example, you could get a header value like Content-Type like this:
#GET
#Path("/myService")
public Response doSomething(#HeaderParam("Content-Type") String contentType) {
...
}
But there are times when you do need to access the HttpServletRequest directly--usually when you are using another API that demands it. If you are using some other library with a method you need that takes HttpServletRequest, then you got to grab it from Spring MVC directly.
For example, check out this method in this random UrlUtil class:
public static String encodeUrlPathSegment(String pathSegment, HttpServletRequest httpServletRequest) {
//Get a path segment
}
You have no choice but to grab HttpServletRequest from Spring MVC.
Spring MVC is built on the Servlet API. Anything you could do with a Servlet, you can therefore do with Spring MVC. What the Spring MVC framework provides is a wrapper to code a web application in a specific architectural style. This wrapper adds behavior and some times simplifies tasks.
Why would they use HttpServletRequest in a spring MVC application?
In this case, because it is the most direct way to get the header.
What are the benefits of using this servlet type code in the spring
app?
Spring doesn't have to wrap anything. You get it directly from the source.
What would this method do?
Read the javadoc.
Any alternatives?
In a #Controller class' handler method, you can declare a parameter annotated with #RequestHeader and have Spring pass an argument that it retrieves from the HttpServletRequest headers.
This is, by default, restricted to #Controller methods annotated with #RequestMapping. If your service class is a HandlerInterceptor, Filter, or other type of class and simply has a reference to the HttpServletRequest object, there is nothing more you can do than retrieve it directly with getHeader(String).
Here is an alternative : Spring MVC define the parameter annotation #RequestHeader to read httpServletRequest headers :
#RequestMapping(...)
public #ResponseBody String myMethod(#RequestHeader String AuthId){
//the value of the parameter AuthId is the value of request header named AuthId
...
}
I'm using Spring MVC and I want to store request specific values somewhere so that they can be fetched throughout my request context. Say I want to set a value into the context in my Controller (or some sort of handler) and then fetch that value from some other part of the Spring request/response cycle (could be a view, view resolver, interceptor, exception handler, etc)... how would I do that?
My question is:
Does Spring MVC already provide a method to do what I described above?
If Spring doesn't have this functionality, any ideas on the best way to do this (by extending something maybe)?
Thanks!
If you need to pass an object from your controller to view, you can use Spring's ModelMap.
#RequestMapping("/list")
public String list(ModelMap modelMap) {
// ... do foo
modelMap.addAttribute("greeting", "hello");
return viewName;
}
on your view:
<h1>${greeting}</h1>
You could use sessionAttributes.
Session Attributes
I took the latest version of the api (3.1) since you didn't mention your version of spring.