How can i get the data from a second form - spring

Question

This is an add page. Person contains a list of addresses so when i try to add an address to that person that is not yet in the database i need to be able to retrieve the person form when an address is submitted and assign that address to that person.
<form:form action="${addAction}" modelAttribute="person">
<form:label path="name">
<spring:message text="Name"/>
</form:label>
<form:input path="name" />
... More labels and inputs
</form:form>
<form:form action="${addAddress}" modelAttribute="address">
... Labels
<input type="submit" value="<spring:message text="Add Address"/>" />
</form:form>
In my controller i have "#ModelAttribute("person") Person p" line which should retrieve the form which has "modelAttribute="person"" in it. But the person retrieved is an empty entity which i'm assuming is because the person form has to be submitted in order to retrieve the data.
#RequestMapping(value = "/person/addAddress", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String addAddress(#ModelAttribute("person") Person p, #ModelAttribute("address") Address a, RedirectAttributes redirectAttrs) {
p.getAddresses().add(a);
redirectAttrs.addFlashAttribute("person", p);
return "redirect:/person";
}
I probably can retrieve the inputs instead of the form and use them to create a new entity with those values but if i were to do that controllers' passing attributes will be full of inputs and would look ugly. Is there a way for me to retrieve those values as a Person entity?
EDIT
Sanjay's first option is the most logical way to do it but since what i wanted to design does not fit for it i can't do it. But Sanjay's comment about making it in one form helped me so i'm selecting Sanjay's answer as the solution but here is how i fixed it
Since i had form actions saved in c:url's i changed the buttons' onclick function such that when clicked forms' action would change depending on the button and i already had corresponding controllers for the actions. For the address list inside my person i had to make a workaround by first adding an empty address to the list in my page controller and then using
<c:forEach items="${person.addresses}" varStatus="loop">
<c:if test="${loop.last}">
<form:input path="addresses[${loop.index}].street" />
...
the code above i was able to fill the previously added empty address.
I'm still in the process of fixing everything but this is the general idea of how i fixed it. Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

I think you may need to revisit your UI, add some hidden field etc. I can think of some solutions:
Have an "Add Address" button which appends a blank row of address into the form using JavaScript, but it doesn't submit to the server. Have the real "Submit" button at the bottom, which would submit the entire form including the person and addresses.
Have a submit button to save the person without address. Then, on a second screen, display the person, and have the address submission button.
Do the above, in reverse, if saving the Address first suits your requirements

Answer 2

I probably can retreieve the inputs instead of the form and use them to create a new entity with those values but if i were to do that controllers' passing attributes will be full of inputs and would look ugly. Is there a way for me to retrieve those values as a Person entity?
For cleaner code -
1.Create JSON object (say formFields) with all your form input data.
2.send formFields to server using ajax call.
3.Read formFields as String in controller
#ModelAttribute("formFields") final String formFields
4.You should have DTO matching formFields name say FormDTO.
5.convert formFields of String type to FormDTO using ObjectMapper API.
FormDTO formDto = null;
try {
ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
formDto = mapper.readValue(formDto, FormDTO.class);
} catch (IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
P.S. ObjectMapper is part of jackson-databind-2.4.4.jar