Since REST based controller methods only return objects ( not views ) to the client based on the request, how can I show view to my user ? Or maybe better question what is a good way to combine spring-mvc web app with REST, so my user always get the answer, not in just ( for example ) JSON format, but also with the view ?
So far as I understood, REST based controller would be perfectly fitting to the mobile app ( for example twitter ), where views are handled inside the app and the only thing server has to worry about is to pass the right object to the right request. But what about the web app ?
I might be wrong in several things ( correct me if I am ), since I am trying to understand REST and I am still learning.
To simplify things - you basically have two options:
1) Build Spring MVC application.
2) Build REST backend application.
In case of first option - within your application you will have both backend and frontend (MVC part).
In case of second option you build only backend application and expose it through REST API. In most cases, you will need to build another application - REST client for your application. This is more flexible application because it gives you opportunity to access your backend application from various clients - for example, you can have Android, IOS applications, you can have web application implemented using Angular etc...
Please note, that thins are not so simple, you can within one application have both REST backend and REST client etc... This is just very very simplified in order that you get some general picture. Hope this clarified a little things.
There is some additional clarification related to REST and views worth learning. From your question, I can see that you mean "view" in a sense of UI(user interface) and typical MVC usage. But "view" can mean different things in a different contexts.
So:
JSON can be considered as a view for data
JSON is a representation of the resource, just like HTML is
JSON doesn't have style (unless you are not using a browser
extension, which most the users are not using)
The browser is recognizing HTML as a markup language and applying a
style to it
Both are media types
Both JSON and HTML are data formats
Both can be transferred over the wire
This method returns a view
#RequestMapping("/home")
String home(Model model) {
return "home"; // resources\templates\home.html
}
This method Returns String
#RequestMapping(value = "/home")
#ResponseBody
public String home() {
return "Success";
}
If you annotate a method with #ResponseBody, Spring will use a json mapper to generate the response. Instead of annotating every method with #ResponseBody you can annotate your class with #RestController.
If you want to return a view, you need to annotate the class with #Controller instead of #RestController and configure a viewresolver. Bij default spring will use thymeleaf as a viewresolver if you have spring-web as a dependency on the classpath. The return type of the method is a String that references the template to be rendered. The templates are stored in src/main/resources/templates.
You can find a guide on the spring website: https://spring.io/guides/gs/serving-web-content/
Related
I am currently working on a Spring Boot project and I am fairly new to template engines. This will also be my first own private project with Spring Boot.
I would like to know whether it is necessary to include a template engine, such as Thymeleaf, while developing a web application with Spring Boot. I'm using PostegreSQL for the database.
I read under another post that a template engine is not needed, if the backend framework uses JSON for data exchange, because template engines are for rendering retrieved data to HTML for the client. I retrieve JSON objects from the database, can I leave template engines out of my project then?
If any more details are needed, leave a comment below.
No they aren't necessary, in fact most new projects that require web-pages are using single page applications now like Angular, React, Vue, ... over thymeleaf or jsp.
Aside from that a Spring project doesn't always need web pages, for instance when you are just creating a REST API for other applications to call on, or when you are automating things like: a mail service / printing / ... You name it.
However, when you DO want a simple solution with some pages that aren't all that dynamic or complex, pivotal / VMware does recommend to use thymeleaf (over jsp and other solutions) because it integrates easily.
I read under another post that a template engine is not needed, if the backend framework uses JSON for data exchange, because template engines are for rendering retrieved data to HTML for the client. I retrieve JSON objects from the database, can I leave template engines out of my project then?
This is partly true. Yes, Thymeleaf and alike are mostly intended to render data to HTML. They can render any text data, including JSON, but there are tools better suited for the job. On other hand it does not matter how you store the data in your database or what database you are using. You can't just skip rendering (serializing) the response so it does not matter how you store it. What matters is what you want to return as response. For HTML Thymeleaf or even JSP are suitable, but for JSON you may want to use Jackson or Gson instead.
You didn't mentioned the technology you are going to use, so for my examples I'll assume you intend to use Spring Web MVC. Lets take a look at "traditional" controller:
#Controller
public class GreetingController {
#GetMapping("/greeting")
public ModelAndView greeting(#RequestParam(value = "name", defaultValue = "World") String name) {
return new ModelAndView("greeting", "greeting", new Greeting(name));
}
}
When you make GET request to "/greeting", Spring will call greeting and get the object it returns. In this case it contains the model (the data we want to render) and the view (the template file to use). Then it will try to find a view (something like greeting.html or greeting.jsp) and use template engine like Thymeleaf (or whatever else is configured) to render it (typically to HTML).
What if we want to return JSON instead? In this case we need to:
modify greeting to return Greeting instance instead of ModelAndView
Use RestController instead of Controller. This will tell Spring MVC that we want to directly serialize the object returned to JSON (or similar format) instead of using template to do that.
Here is the modified example:
#RestController
public class GreetingController {
#GetMapping("/greeting")
public Greeting greeting(#RequestParam(value = "name", defaultValue = "World") String name) {
return new Greeting(name);
}
}
Spring MVC still needs some help to serialize the Greeting instance to JSON. But if you use Spring Boot and the web starter, you don't have to worry about it. It will include Jackson for you.
This is in no way exhaustive answer. As a matter of fact it skips a lot of details, but I hope nevertheless it is useful one. If you want to create REST API using JSON, this Building a RESTful Web Service guide is a good place to start. If you follow the Starting with Spring Initializr steps you'll get a project setup with only what is needed (well maybe with a bit extra but I would not worry too much about it).
I am designing a REST controller layer with the concept of different versioning which might happen in the future.
I am thinking of having separate classes with version number as follows.
#RequestMapping("/v1/api")
#RestController
class V1RestController {
}
#RequestMapping("/v2/api")
#RestController
class V2RestController {
}
Or V2RestController might extend V1RestController depending on the requirements. This is just a draft idea. But my question is if there is any Spring MVC api which can catch the URL and look up the version '/v1/api or /v2/api' and delegate the request to the right controller.
Based on my research, the best way is to make it backward-compatible, but i am sure that the reality is different and there would be some cases to have different implementations.
I know that there are other ways to design the rest controller layer for different versioning, but for now, i would like to take this approach.
Any help would be appreciated.
But my question is if there is any Spring MVC api which can catch the URL and look up the version '/v1/api or /v2/api' and delegate the request to the right controller.
DispatcherServlet intercepts the request (what to intercept it looks in "web.xml" ), and then DispatcherServlet looks at the request URL and looks for the controller whose "value" parameter (the "#RequestMapping" annotation) matches the request URL, if a match is found: control is transferred in the corresponding controller. Something like this.
I've decided to use custom template engine with Spring MVC framework.
my templates implemented in java and have method for rendering into String:
public String render(Map context);
how to configure spring to make them available in Controller beans as views, for example like:
ModelAndView modelAndView = new ModelAndView("activationPage"); // - view name which will actually be java class name reference.
modelAndView.addObject("validationResult", validationResult);
return modelAndView;
Model will be passed as context in code connecting spring and my template engine.
You need to implement org.springframework.web.servlet.View (which should be easy, you already have something very similar to the render method it needs), as well as org.springframework.web.servlet.ViewResolver, which maps the view names (e.g. "activationPage") on your custom views.
Once you have that, drop a bean of your ViewResolver class into the context, and (unless you've done something else that gets in the way) it should automatically be picked up by Spring and should just work. if you have other ViewResolvers already in there, they may get into a fight over who gets to resolve the view, in which case ask a new question.
Hi I am the author of Rythm template engine, about half year ago I am having the same requirement like you. What I did is to read the source code of Velocity and Freemarker view of SpringFramework. And then create the Rythm view for spring following their approach.
It's easy to follow something that is already there, and it makes your implementation in good quality to follow the official module. Good luck on you :-)
I want to use Spring MVC 3.0 to build interfaces for AJAX transactions. I want the results to be returned as JSON, but I don't necessarily want the web pages to be built with JSP. I only want requests to the controllers to be intercepted/routed through the DispatcherServlet and the rest of the project to continue to function like a regular Java webapp without Spring integration.
My thought was to define the servlet-mapping url pattern in web.xml as being something like "/controller/*", then have the class level #RequestMapping in my controller to be something like #RequestMapping("/controller/colors"), and finally at the method level, have #RequestMapping(value = "/controller/colors/{name}", method = RequestMethod.GET).
Only problem is, I'm not sure if I need to keep adding "/controller" in all of the RequestMappings and no matter what combo I try, I keep getting 404 requested resource not available errors.
The ultimate goal here is for me to be able to type in a web browser "http://localhost:8080/myproject/controller/colors/red" and get back the RGB value as a JSON string.
You are not correct about needing to add the entire path everywhere, the paths are cumulative-
If you have a servlet mapping of /controller/* for the Spring's DispatcherServlet, then any call to /controller/* will be handled now by the DispatcherServlet, you just have to take care of rest of the path info in your #RequestMapping, so your controller can be
#Controller
#RequestMapping("/colors")
public class MyController{
#RequestMapping("/{name}
public String myMappedMethod(#PathVariable("name") String name, ..){
}
}
So now, this method will be handled by the call to /controller/colors/blue etc.
I don't necessarily want the web pages to be built with JSP
Spring MVC offers many view template integration options, from passthrough to raw html to rich templating engines like Velocity and Freemarker. Perhaps one of those options will fit what you're looking for.
What could the best strategy for writing validation layer for mid-enterprise level business application built on Spring 2.5
I know that Spring provides facility where we can implement Validator interface and write validation logic in validate method. But this will be restricted to only web requests coming through spring controller.
I would like to develop the validation framework which can be utilized during web-services calls.
In other words, the framework can remain and be called independently without the need of implementing Validator interface and then too it can be automatically integrated into Spring MVC flow.
Hope you get my point.
The Spring Validation framework can be used outside of Spring MVC. What WebServices Stack are you using? If you are using Spring-WS (Spring's Web Services stack) they have special instructions on how to set up the validator here:
http://static.springframework.org/spring-ws/sites/1.5/reference/html/server.html#d0e2313
If you are using some other stack, it is probably easier to implement something for that stack (or find one) that will use Spring's validation framework.
Recall that the Validator interface defines two methods:
boolean supports(Class clazz)
void validate(Object target, Errors errors)
The Object target is your form object, which is the whole object representing the page to be shown to the user. The Errors instance will contain the errors that will be displayed to the user.
So, what you need to do is define an intermediary that can be called with the specifics in your form that you want to validate which are also the same as in your web service. The intermediary can take one of two forms:
(probably the best):
public interface ErrorReturning {
public void getErrors(Errors errors);
}
(this can get ugly really fast if more than two states are added):
public interface ValidationObject {
public Errors getErrors(Errors errors);
public Object getResultOfWebServiceValidation();
}
I would suggest that the first approach be implemented. With your common validation, pass an object that can be used for web service validation directly, but allow it to implement the getErrors() method. This way, in your validator for Spring, inside your validation method you can simply call:
getCommonValidator().validate(partialObject).getErrors(errors);
Your web service would be based around calls to getCommonValidator().validate(partialObject) for a direct object to be used in the web service.
The second approach is like this, though the interface only allows for an object to be returned from the given object for a web service validation object, instead of the object being a usable web service validation object in and of itself.