Spring MVC without annotation - HTTP 404 page not found error coming - spring

Question

I am trying to write a simple Spring MVC web application without using annotations. However, when I access specific URL, I am getting HTTP 404 error. The relevant code snippet is below:
web.xml changes done for front controller:
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" xmlns:web="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd" id="WebApp_ID" version="2.4">
<display-name>POCProject</display-name>
<servlet>
<servlet-name>FrontController</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>FrontController</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
</web-app>
The servlet name is --> FrontController
Hence, have the following configuration file --> FrontController-servlet.xml
<beans ...>
<bean id="HandlerMapping" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping"/>
<bean name="/userdetails" class="com.example.controllers.UserDetailsController"/>
<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
<property name="prefix"> <value>/WEB-INF/</value> </property>
<property name="suffix"> <value>.html</value> </property>
</bean>
</beans>
In above configuration file, the Handler mapping class is --> org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping
The controller class for URL /userdetails is --> com.example.controllers.UserDetailsController
The code for this controller is below:
public class UserDetailsController extends AbstractController {
#Override
protected ModelAndView handleRequestInternal(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse res) throws Exception {
ModelAndView mw = new ModelAndView("userInfo");
return mw;
}
}
So, for a request with /userdetails the controller should send the view userInfo.html
However when I invoke this, I am getting HTTP 404 error.
I have deployed this in Apache tomcat, and the below is the message that I get in the tomcat console.
WARNING: No mapping found for HTTP request with URI [/POCProject/WEB-INF/userInfo.html] in DispatcherServlet with name "FrontController"
Any inputs on what I am missing here?

Answer 1

The javadoc for InternalResourceViewResolver says that it is a (emphasize mine):
Wrapper for a JSP or other resource within the same web application. Exposes model objects as request attributes and forwards the request to the specified resource URL using a RequestDispatcher.
A JSP is internally converted in a true servlet by Tomcat (or by any servlet container) that is a resource suitable for forwarding. But a simple HTML is not.
That means that Spring InternalResourceViewResolver cannot use HTML views and you must convert them to JSP files.