Spring 3 : Binding same controller method to multiple form action - spring

Question

I have a controller method with RequestMapping.PUT and having a URI
#RequestMapping(value = "/add/email", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String addNewAccountEmail(#Valid #ModelAttribute EmailClass emailObject, BindingResult bindingResult, Model model) {
return displayForm(model);
}
I have a form like :
<form:form id="add-user-email" action="/add/email" name="manageUserAddEmail" method="post" modelAttribute="accountEmail">
I want to have more form pointing to same action , but need to do different operations inside addNewAccountEmail method. So how can I achieve this in Spring ? Basically any parameter which can make me differentiate functionalities or somehow I can have multiple methods having same RequestMapping URL and Method ?
I can only use RequestMethod.POST as I have similar requirements for other methods as well.
Basically I do not want the URL to change in Browser when invoking actions, that is why I want all form actions to point to same action URL.

Answer 1

You could point all of your forms at the same controller method and then differentiate the form-specific functionality within that method by looking for form-specific request parameters.
Each form would need to add its own request parameter to identify it - such as:
<input type="hidden" name="form1_param" value="1"/>
And then you can vary the behaviour inside the method by inspecting the HttpServletRequest:
#RequestMapping(value = "/add/email", method = RequestMethod.POST, )
public String addNewAccountEmail(#Valid #ModelAttribute EmailClass emailObject, BindingResult bindingResult, Model model, HttpServletRequest request) {
if (request.getParameter("form1_param") != null) { // identifies 1st form
// Do something
} else if (request.getParameter("form2_param") != null) { // indentifies 2nd form
// Do something else
}
...
}
It would be cleaner however to have multiple controller methods mapped to the same path, but specify different params in the RequestMapping - to differentiate the different forms.
#RequestMapping(value = "/add/email", params="form1_param", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String addNewAccountEmail1(#Valid #ModelAttribute EmailClass emailObject, BindingResult bindingResult, Model model) {
// Do something specific for form1
return displayForm(model);
}
And also:
#RequestMapping(value = "/add/email", params="form2_param", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String addNewAccountEmail2(#Valid #ModelAttribute EmailClass emailObject, BindingResult bindingResult, Model model) {
// Do something specific for form2
return displayForm(model);
}
Etc.

Answer 2

#RequestMapping accepts arrays as parameters (with an or semantic).
#RequestMapping(
value = "/add/email",
method = { RequestMethod.POST, RequestMethod.PUT } )