Professional Java for Web Applications

Chapter 13Replacing Your Servlets with Controllers

IN THIS CHAPTER

• What is @RequestMapping?
• How to utilize Spring Framework’s model and view pattern
• Easing your life with form objects
• Keeping the Customer Support application up-to-date

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

You can find the wrox.com code downloads for this chapter at http://www.wrox.com/go/projavaforwebapps on the Download Code tab. The code for this chapter is divided into the following major examples:

• Model-View-Controller Project
• Spring-Forms Project
• Customer-Support-v10 Project

NEW MAVEN DEPENDENCY FOR THIS CHAPTER

In addition to the Maven dependencies introduced in previous chapters, you also need the following Maven dependency:

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-oxm</artifactId>
            <version>4.0.2.RELEASE</version>
            <scope>compile</scope>
        </dependency>

UNDERSTANDING @REQUESTMAPPING

In Chapter 12, you were introduced to Spring Framework controllers and how to use the @RequestMapping annotation to map requests to methods within your controllers. @RequestMapping is an extraordinarily powerful tool in the Spring toolset, enabling you to map a request with the URL, the Content-Type or Accept header of the request, the HTTP request method, the presence or value of specified request parameters or headers, or any combination of these.

With @RequestMapping, you no longer need complex switches or logic branches within Servlet doGet or similar methods to select the proper ...