Spring MVC: HTML Page loading, HTML views and Controller workflow.

[Reshma Shanbhag]

Hi,

I am a newbie to Spring. I am working with a very basic application. The workflow is

1) CustomerDtls.html page collecting customer data i.e. name, email address, phone #
2.) on submitting the data, save it to the in memory database

I am testing the above with apache-tomcat-8.0.18 server with exploded directory deployment. Deployment no issues.

Below is my deployment Structure

<CustomerService>
------------------------META-INF

-------------------------static
----------------------------------CustomerDtls.html
----------------------------------ThankYou.html

-------------------------WEB-INF
------------------------------------classes
------------------------------------lib
------------------------------------spring
------------------------------------views
------------------------------------web.xml



in the web-inf/spring/servlet.context.xml i have the following configuration


<!-- Handles HTTP GET requests for /resources/** by efficiently serving up static resources in the ${webappRoot}/resources directory -->
<resources mapping="/resources/**" location="/resources/" />

<!-- Handles HTTP GET requests for /static/** by efficiently serving up static resources in the ${webappRoot}/static directory -->
<resources mapping="/static/**" location="/static/" />


<!-- Resolves views selected for rendering by @Controllers to .jsp resources in the /WEB-INF/views directory -->
<beans:bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
<beans:property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views/" />
<beans:property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
</beans:bean>


I have a CustomerDtlsController.java as below

@Controller
public class CustomerDtlsController {
	
	private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(CustomerDtlsController.class);
	
	
	@RequestMapping(value = "/CustomerDtls", method=RequestMethod.GET)
	public String customerFormSubmit(@RequestParam(value = "fName", required=false) String fName, @RequestParam(value = "lName", required=false) String lName, @RequestParam(value = "sPhone" , required=false) String sPhone, @RequestParam(value = "email", required=false) String sEmail ){
		Customer customer = new Customer();
		customer.setfName(fName);
		customer.setlName(lName);
		customer.setsPhone(sPhone);
		customer.setEmail(sEmail);
		System.out.println("Customer Object = " + customer );
		return "static/ThankYou.html";
    }
}

When i go to the browser and type http://localhost:8080/CustomerService/CustomerDtls.html, it does not load the .html page, workflow starts with CustomerDtlsController.customerFormSubmit() and displays an 404 message saying requested resource /views/static/ThankYou.html.jsp is not available.

i changed the static resource mapping from

<resources mapping="/static/**" location="/static/" />

to

<resources mapping="/*.html**" location="/static/" />

After doing the above change i am able to atleast load the ThankYou.html as http://localhost:8080/CustomerService/ThankYou.html, else would get 404 error message.

Below is what i want to know:

1.) CustomerDtls.html is a static file and i want to load it without dispatcher servlet routing it to CustomerDtlsController, on submit of the details the controller needs to be approached.
2.) If the view returned from controller is a plain .html file how do we configure it, so that view controller knows to look in WEB_ROOT/static folder and not WEB_INF/VIEWS


Please help me.

Best Regards,
REshma

[Prasad Krishnegowda]

<!-- Resolves views selected for rendering by @Controllers to .jsp resources in the /WEB-INF/views directory -->
<beans:bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
<beans:property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views/" />
<beans:property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
</beans:bean> 

Here, you configure your views to be located in /WEB-INF/views and JSP pages, but you need plain html as views and which are under <WEB_ROOT>/static and not WEB-INF/views.

change this viewresolver appropriately or remove it and return your views accordingly in the controller.