Spring MVC - Hello World Example

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The following example shows how to write a simple web based Hello World application using the Spring MVC Framework. To start with, let us have a working Eclipse IDE in place and follow the subsequent steps to develop a Dynamic Web Application using the Spring Web Framework.

Step Description
1 Create a Dynamic Web Project with a name HelloWeb and create a package com.howcodex under the src folder in the created project.
2 Drag and drop the following Spring and other libraries into the folder WebContent/WEB-INF/lib..
3 Create a Java class HelloController under the com.howcodex package.
4 Create Spring configuration files web.xml and HelloWeb-servlet.xml under the WebContent/WEB-INF folder.
5 Create a sub-folder with a name jsp under the WebContent/WEB-INFfolder. Create a view file hello.jsp under this sub-folder.
6 The final step is to create the content of the source and configuration files and export the application as explained below.

HelloController.java

package com.howcodex;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;
import org.springframework.ui.ModelMap;

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/hello")
public class HelloController{
 
   @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET)
   public String printHello(ModelMap model) {
      model.addAttribute("message", "Hello Spring MVC Framework!");

      return "hello";
   }

}

web.xml

<web-app id = "WebApp_ID" version = "2.4"
   xmlns = "http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" 
   xmlns:xsi = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xsi:schemaLocation = "http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee 
   http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd">

   <display-name>Spring MVC Application</display-name>

   <servlet>
      <servlet-name>HelloWeb</servlet-name>
      <servlet-class>
         org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet
      </servlet-class>
      <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
   </servlet>

   <servlet-mapping>
      <servlet-name>HelloWeb</servlet-name>
      <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
   </servlet-mapping>
 
</web-app>

HelloWeb-servlet.xml

<beans xmlns = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
   xmlns:context = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
   xmlns:xsi = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xsi:schemaLocation = "
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans     
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/context 
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd">

   <context:component-scan base-package = "com.howcodex" />

   <bean class = "org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
      <property name = "prefix" value = "/WEB-INF/jsp/" />
      <property name = "suffix" value = ".jsp" />
   </bean>
 
</beans>

hello.jsp

<%@ page contentType = "text/html; charset = UTF-8" %>
<html>
   <head>
      <title>Hello World</title>
   </head>
   <body>
      <h2>${message}</h2>
   </body>
</html>

Following is the list of Spring and other libraries to be included in the web application. We can just drag these files and drop them in – WebContent/WEB-INF/lib folder.

  • servlet-api-x.y.z.jar

  • commons-logging-x.y.z.jar

  • spring-aop-x.y.z.jar

  • spring-beans-x.y.z.jar

  • spring-context-x.y.z.jar

  • spring-core-x.y.z.jar

  • spring-expression-x.y.z.jar

  • spring-webmvc-x.y.z.jar

  • spring-web-x.y.z.jar

Once you are done with creating source and configuration files, export your application. Right click on your application, use Export → WAR File option and save your HelloWeb.war file in Tomcat's webapps folder.

Now start your Tomcat server and make sure you are able to access other webpages from webapps folder using a standard browser. Now, try to access the URL − http://localhost:8080/HelloWeb/hello. If everything is fine with the Spring Web Application, we will see the following screen.

Spring Web Hello World

You should note that in the given URL, HelloWeb is the application name and hello is the virtual subfolder, which we have mentioned in our controller using @RequestMapping("/hello"). You can use direct root while mapping your URL using @RequestMapping("/"), in this case you can access the same page using short URL http://localhost:8080/HelloWeb/, but it is advised to have different functionalities under different folders.

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