F5 or page refresh calls onSubmit of spring controller - database again updated

[Kavita Shivani]

Hi All,
I do a form submit in my first page, the form data is saved and returned in the next page as a result set. Now when I refresh the second page, the data is again saved in the database from the previous page. I could see that the onSubmit of the first page controller is being called again. How do I stop this. Because I already saved the data and I also have the result set in my command object on refresh i simply want to display the existing values.

thank you,
Kavitha.

[James Ward]

You can generate a Unique Id and store in a hidden field in the form on the first page.
When you save the data, save this unique Id too.

Before saving, always check for presence of Unique Id, if it exists, it means this is a Re-Submit of the same information!

[Kavita Shivani]

Do I create this field in the database and save it the first time a record is saved?

[Kavita Shivani]

It would be good if we have some method in the controller class kind of onRefresh() which we could override and call onsubmit if necessary or just load the existing data again.

[James Ward]

Kavita Shivani wrote:Do I create this field in the database and save it the first time a record is saved?

Sure.

[Amit kull]

Hi,
Have a look at Point 4.6 of Spring MVC Step By Step tutorial here

[Hong Anderson]

You should redirect after submit, so user can refresh the page without calling onSubmit again.

[Kavita Shivani]

Ok that worked great for me. Since its a dumb page after form submission, I dint have much to do, I did a redirect, and in the next page's controller I have overridden referenceData() method of the spring's SimpleFormController class which gets called repeatedly (no additonal code necessary here for this to work) but to let you know that this gets called on every refresh. I make sure I send the request attibutes that I need in my next page at the end of the onsubmit. And its working fine.

To help anyone who will search for this in future I have placed my code snippet.
In my page one on form submit:

   protected ModelAndView onSubmit(HttpServletRequest request HttpServletResponse response, Object command, BindException errors)                      throws Exception {
.
.
- required logic.. 
.
.
in the end..
WebUtil.setAttributeIntoSession(request, "invoice", invoiceCommand); //my own classes to do set attribute
		return new ModelAndView(new RedirectView(getSuccessView()));
} 

In my page 2 do nothing, just F5 and you still have old data and no submit action takes place for the old page.

Thank you, everyone for your response and suggestion.

Cheers,
Kavita.

[Hong Anderson]

Thanks for the update. Submit-Redirect is a pattern to specifically solve this problem.