I want to map a URL (for example, http://example.com/v1/books:search) containing colons to my Spring MVC controller, but I can't make it work.
#RequestMapping("/v1/books")
public class BooksController {
#GetMapping(":search")
public Page<Book> search(#RequestParam String author) {
// Return books written by the author.
}
When I test this API, Spring returns 404 NOT_FOUND to me. It seems that Spring doesn't support colons in URL mapping.
Is there any method to make it work? Thanks.
I hit this attempting to do similar so I thought I'd share my findings.
With using most defaults and your code, the search method will be mapped to /v1/books/:search which is obviously not quite what you want. There are two places that I've found so far that get in the way of changing this. The first is the AntPathMatcher's combine method. This method will attempt to put a path separator (/) between segments. The second place is within the RequestMappingInfo's path parsing code. The former can be replaced easily. The latter not so much.
As the methods that tend to be problematic involve combining multiple #RequestMapping annotations, what I've found to work is to simply side-step combinations. On my controller class, I have a #Controller annotation and any defaults for #RequestMapping, but not a path attribute. On each method, the full path is then added. This isn't great, but it does get collection-level special "methods" to function properly. In your example, this would look like:
#Controller
#RequestMapping
public class BooksController {
#GetMapping("/v1/books:search")
public Page<Book> search(#RequestParam String author) {
// Return books written by the author.
}
Long story short: Do not do this - use / as a separator for the method.
A bit more detail: Have a look at Spring Framework issue #24771 that suggests that the team actually moves away from various ways to handle non-standard URL mappings in favor of simpler logic of URL processing, after entangling in a series of various issues with similar concepts. This "custom method" thing is unlikely to get a first class support in Spring, as a result.
Therefore, despite what Google does, just do this as a normal person and use /v1/books/search path:
#RequestMapping("v1/books")
public class BooksController {
#GetMapping("search")
public Page<Book> search(#RequestParam String author) {
// Return books written by the author.
}
}
Related
Most of my experience with creating controllers with Spring are for REST controllers that consume JSON formatted requests. I've been searching for documentation on how to do testing for form submission, and so far this is how I understand it should go using MockMvc:
MvcResult result = mockMvc.perform(post("/submit")
.param('title', 'test title')
.param('description', 'test description'))
.andReturn()
However, I'm not sure how to map the form parameters to a model object. I've seen the #ModelAttribute annotation pop up in my searches but I can't figure out how it should be used for mapping. In addition, this quick start guide from the official documentation does not elaborate on how things like th:object and th:field translate to HTML and subsequently to URL encoded form.
I have my controller code similar to the following:
#PostMapping('/submit')
def submit(#ModelAttribute WriteUp writeUp) {
//do something with writeUp object
'result'
}
I discovered through trial and error that my specific problem might have been Groovy specific. There test code and the controller code, it turns out, have no issues. To reiterate, for testing form submission, use the param method through perform method of MockMvcRequestBuilders. Another thing to note is that this doesn't seem to work if content type is not specified. Here's a sample test code that works for me:
MvcResult result = webApp.perform(post("/submit")
.contentType(APPLICATION_FORM_URLENCODED) //from MediaType
.param('title', 'test title')
.param('description', 'test description'))
.andReturn()
As you can see, it's not much different from what I posted originally. The controller code is pretty much just the same, with #ModelAttribute working just fine.
The problem with my setup though was that since I was using Groovy, I assumed that getters and setters were automatically generated in my WriteUp class. Here's how the WriteUp class looked originally:
class WriteUp {
private String title
private String description
}
I haven't written code in Groovy for a while, and the last time I did, classes like the one above can be assumed to have getters and setters implicitly. However, it turns out that is not the case. To solve my specific issue, I updated the access modifier in the fields to be default (package level):
class WriteUp {
String title
String description
}
I've seen the #ModelAttribute annotation pop up in my searches but I
can't figure out how it should be used for mapping.
When you mark your writeUp object with #ModelAttribute, then the Spring container populates the parameters (like title, description, etc..) from HttpServletRequest object & injects the object to the controller method, when the request comes to the server from the client (could be a Browser or MockMvc unit test client or anything else).
Also, few other basic points for your quick understanding:
(1) Controller methods are mapped to an URI and RequestMethod (like POST/GET/DELETE/PUT et..) like shown below:
#RequestMapping(value="/submit", method=RequestMethod.POST)
public String submit(#ModelAttribute WriteUp writeUp) {
//Call the service and Save the details
model.addAttribute("Writeup details added successfully");
return "writeUpResult"; //Returns to the View (JSP)
}
(2) #ModelAttribute will be mapped to an object (like your writeUp) for http POST/PUT requests where the html formd data is part of http body.
(3) #RequestParam or #PathParam will be used for http GET requests where the parameters are part of URL (i.e., not part of http body).
You can look here for understanding the DispatcherServlet request handling & Spring MVC basic web flow.
I'm currently working on a spring based web application and have a special requirement that seems not (at least not out of the box) be provided by spring MVC. The application serves data for multiple users each organized in their own "company". Once a user has logged in, I'm able to identify to which company he belongs to.
The application itself is built with multiple "modules", each with it's own domain objects, DAO, Service and Controller classes. The idea behind this concept is that I can for example extend a certain controller class (let's say to use a different service class) based upon the user and here is my problem.
Since i do not want to change my request paths for certain users, I'm currently looking for a way how to serve a request issued on a certain request path with different instances of a controller based upon the user issuing the request.
I came up with the idea to attach a HTTP Header Field for the company
Example:
X-Company:12345
and have my controllers configured like this:
#Controller
#RequestMapping(value="/foo/")
public class FooController {
// ...
}
#Controller
#RequestMapping(value="/foo" headers="X-Company=12345")
public class SpecialFooController extends FooController {
// ...
}
However this is not possible, since spring MVC treats each header (except Content-Type and Accept) as a kind of restriction, so in my case it would handle all requests with the FooController instead of the SpecialFooController unless i add a "headers" restriction on the FooController as well, which is not practicable.
Is there some way how to customize this behaviour or some direction one could point me to look for? Or maybe someone has another idea how to achieve this. It'll be highly appreciated.
Thanks!
I'am not sure but I think you can do this with HandlerMapping. Have a look at the documentation
To take your own suggestion, you can use the #RequestHeader annotation in your controller methods:
#Controller
public class MyController {
#RequestMapping("/someAction")
public void myControllerMethod(#RequestHeader('X-Company-Id') String companyId) {
}
}
Or you could use #PathVariable:
#Controller
public class MyController {
#RequestMapping("/{companyId}/someAction")
public void myControllerMethod(#PathVariable("companyId") String companyId) {
}
}
Using this approach would mean that it is in fact different URLs for each company, but if you can set the company id header, I guess you also can suffix the URLs with the company id.
But there are also other possibilities. You could write an interceptor that puts the company id in a session or request variable. Then you wouldn't have to add the annotation to every controller method. You could also use a subdomain for each company, but that wouldn't look too pretty if the company id is a random alphanumeric string. E.g: companyone.mydomain.com, companytwo.mydomain.com
Edit
#RequestMapping can be added to the controller level as you know, so you should be able to do
#Controller
#RequestMapping("/controller/{companyId}")
as the base url, if that's a better option.
I was able to meet the requirement by making usage of a customized RequestCondition. By defining your own annotation that can be placed at the type and method level of a controller. Extending the RequestMappingHandlerMapping by your own implementation and overriding the getCustomTypeCondition() and getCustomMethodCondition() methods translates a controller annotation into your own RequestCondition.
When a request comes in, the custom RequestCondition will be evaluated and the annotated controller(method) will then be called to serve the request. However this has the downside, that one needs to remove a servlet-context.xml file and switch to the WebMvcConfigurationSupport class instead in order to be able to use your customized RequestMappingHandlerMapping class.
This question was also discussed here.
Edit:
A pretty good example using this can be found here.
Posted in spring forum with no response.
I have the following code snippet (from here), which is part of my pet project.
#Controller
#RequestMapping("/browse")
public class MediaBrowser {
...
#RequestMapping("/**")
public final ModelAndView listContents(final HttpServletRequest request) {
String folder = (String) request.getAttribute(
HandlerMapping.PATH_WITHIN_HANDLER_MAPPING_ATTRIBUTE);
...
}
I access the following url:
http://localhost:8080/myapp/browse
In spring 3.0.6.RELEASE, I got the folder variable as null, which is the expected value.
In spring 3.1.RC1, the folder variable is /browse.
Is this a bug or has something changed in spring-3.1?
As skaffman said, you probably shouldn't use PATH_WITHIN_HANDLER_MAPPING_ATTRIBUTE. Take a look at How to match a Spring #RequestMapping having a #pathVariable containing "/"? for an example of using AntPathMatcher to accomplish what you are trying
This looks very much like an internal implementation detail of the framework, one that you should not be relying on.
The javadoc for PATH_WITHIN_HANDLER_MAPPING_ATTRIBUTE says:
Note: This attribute is not required to be supported by all HandlerMapping implementations. URL-based HandlerMappings will typically support it, but handlers should not necessarily expect this request attribute to be present in all scenarios.
I wouldn't be surprised if the behaviour changed slightly between 3.0 and 3.1.
Imagine that I have a Spring MVC controller something like this:
#Controller
#RequestMapping("/base-url")
public class MyController{
//..snip
#RequestMapping(method=RequestMethod.GET, value="/edit/{id}")
public String edit(Model model, HttpServletRequest request, Authentication authentication){
//..snip
}
}
My question is regarding the inner value parameter to the #RequestMapping annotation at the function level. Is the pre-slash on /edit/{id} required, or does edit/{id} do the job just as well? I would have imagined that the pre-slash would set the request to be absolute, regardless of the class level mapping, but it seems to be ignored.
Is one or the other considered better practice?
In the Spring documentation, they seem to always use the pre-slash. Are there any practical benefits to doing that?
Thanks,
idb.
According to the spring documentation, having a class level #RequestMapping annotation implies that all method level #RequestMappings will be relative to that of the class'.
It might be nice however, to have the ability to override the relative mappings in some rare cases.
I personally prefer to add pre-slash in value of #RequestMapping. In code level you can see: If the value does not start with an / then Spring (DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping) will add it. Details answer you can visit: Use or not leading slash in value for #RequestMapping. Need official docs or point to Spring source?
I'm a php programmer now doing a Java web project using Spring framework. I'm trying to organize my JSP files the way i would have organized my .tpl files in php.
So if it would have been php i would have done it like this:
index.tpl
includes one of layout.tpls (ajax.tpl, mobile.tpl, general.tpl, simplified.tpl . . .)
includes the header of the page
includes menus
includes the actual content of the page
includes the page footer
then from the php controller i would be able to do something like this:
setLayout('general');
showTopMenu(false);
setContent('mySexyPage');
beside that i would have organized my stuff so that my views (tpl files) will be organized in folderŅ each corresponding to a single controller. like this:
userManager
addUSer.tpl
editUser.tpl
editUserPermissions.tpl
articleManager
addArticle.tpl
editArticle.tpl
and in each controller somehow define from which folder to load my content template.
Now in Spring i have a controller with methods handling requests and each of the methods returning what the view should be. I can extend all my controllers from a single abstract class where i will create an instance of ModelAndView with all default values set, then request handling methods will add what they need to the instance their daddy already created and return it.
The problem with the above approach is that i'm not forcing the coder who's writing controllers to use the ModelAndView object i created, he way still return anything he wants from the handling method he wrote.
Is there some interface containing a method like ModelAndView getModelAndView() my daddy controller will implement so Spring will ignore whatever handler methods are returning?
Or is there some better way to do this ?
Content Template Issue
The Java world has a (more than one actually, but I'm sticking with the one I know) solution for this problem, it is called Tiles. check out section 16 of the Spring 3.0.5 Reference.
ModelAndView Issue
This is more interesting. First, you can use Model with out view and have your controllers just return the view name (i.e. return a String). I believe you want to create the initial Model somewhere. Then have each controller hander method accept an argument of type Model.
Here is what I tend to do (no claim that it is a best practice):
Have a Controller.get(Model model) method that sets the initial values.
#RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET)
public String get(Model model)
{ ... set default stuff ... }
Every Handler method is a variation of this:
#RequestMapping(value = "/search", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String search(Model model, ... other stuff as needed ...)
{ ... set stuff in model ... }