Spring 3 MVC - Controller is called but views are not found - spring

Question

I'm trying to set up a skeleton Spring 3 MVC project but i'm having difficulties getting the views to render. I have followed the structure as described in the mvc-basic sample project and at http://blog.springsource.com/2009/12/21/mvc-simplifications-in-spring-3-0/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Interface21TeamBlog+%28SpringSource+Team+Blog%29 to set up the web.xml, app-config.xml and mvc-config.xml files. The controller gets called but when it reaches the point of finding the view and rendering it i get a 404 error. The files are as follows:
web.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app version="2.5" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd">
<!-- Handles all requests into the application -->
<servlet>
<servlet-name>myServlet</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<init-param>
<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
<param-value>
/WEB-INF/app-config.xml
</param-value>
</init-param>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>myServlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/app/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
</web-app>
app-config.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd">
<!-- Scans the classpath of this application for #Components to deploy as beans -->
<context:component-scan base-package="com.myProject" />
<!-- Application Message Bundle -->
<bean id="messageSource" class="org.springframework.context.support.ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource">
<property name="basename" value="/WEB-INF/messages/messages" />
<property name="cacheSeconds" value="0" />
</bean>
<!-- Configures Spring MVC -->
<import resource="mvc-config.xml" />
</beans>
mvc-config.xml:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
xsi:schemaLocation="
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.0.xsd">
<!-- Configures the #Controller programming model -->
<mvc:annotation-driven />
<mvc:view-controller path="/app" view-name="welcome"/>
<!-- Configures Handler Interceptors -->
<mvc:interceptors>
<!-- Changes the locale when a 'locale' request parameter is sent; e.g. /?locale=de -->
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.LocaleChangeInterceptor" />
</mvc:interceptors>
<!-- Saves a locale change using a cookie -->
<bean id="localeResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.CookieLocaleResolver" />
<!-- Resolves view names to protected .jsp resources within the /WEB-INF/views directory -->
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views/"/>
<property name="suffix" value=".jsp"/>
</bean>
</beans>
In "Java Resources : src" -> com.myProject -> HelloWorldController.java i have:
package com.myProject;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView;
#Controller
#RequestMapping(value="/helloworld")
public class HelloWorldController {
#RequestMapping(method=RequestMethod.GET)
public ModelAndView helloWorld() {
ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView();
mav.setViewName("helloworld");
mav.addObject("message", "Hello World!");
return mav;
}
#RequestMapping(value="/Second", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public ModelAndView Second(){
ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView();
mav.setViewName("Second");
mav.addObject("message", "Hello World!");
return mav;
}
}
and in WebContent/WEB-INF/views i have:
WebContent (folder)
WEB-INF (folder)
views (folder)
helloworld (folder)
helloworld.jsp (.jsp view)
helloworld.jsp (.jsp view)
welcome.jsp (.jsp view)
The views have straighforward html in them. When i request http://localhost:8080/projectname/app i correctly get the the views -> welcome.jsp page. However when i request http://localhost:8080/projectname/app/helloworld or http://localhost:8080/projectname/app/helloworld/ execution hits the correct controller actions but i get HTTP Status 404 - /projectname/WEB-INF/views/helloworld.jsp
Can anyone advise as to what is wrong?
Thanks

Answer 1

There are a few issues. The first one is that you only dispatch /app/* urls to Spring in your web.xml:
<url-pattern>/app/*</url-pattern>
That's fine if the request mapping was /app/helloworld, but means that /helloworld doesn't even get to spring. What you're probably wanting to do is to use a urlrewrite filter to map requests into the /app/* space.
Take a dependency on tuckey and then add this to your web.xml:
<filter>
<filter-name>UrlRewriteFilter</filter-name>
<filter-class>org.tuckey.web.filters.urlrewrite.UrlRewriteFilter</filter-class>
</filter>
<filter-mapping>
<filter-name>UrlRewriteFilter</filter-name>
<url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
</filter-mapping>
Then add a file called urlrewrite.xml in your WEB-INF directory, containing:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE urlrewrite PUBLIC "-//tuckey.org//DTD UrlRewrite 3.0//EN" "http://tuckey.org/res/dtds/urlrewrite3.0.dtd">
<urlrewrite default-match-type="wildcard">
<rule>
<from>/images/**</from>
<to>/images/$1</to>
</rule>
<rule>
<from>/scripts/**</from>
<to>/scripts/$1</to>
</rule>
<rule>
<from>/styles/**</from>
<to>/styles/$1</to>
</rule>
<rule>
<from>/**</from>
<to>/app/$1</to>
</rule>
<outbound-rule>
<from>/app/**</from>
<to>/$1</to>
</outbound-rule>
</urlrewrite>
After that, a request to /helloworld should go to the correct place. You'll probably want to change the root view controller too:
<mvc:view-controller path="/" view-name="welcome"/>

Answer 2

Looks like it is because you have not specified the viewClass property.
Can you try with
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
<property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView"/>
<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views/"/>
<property name="suffix" value=".jsp"/>
</bean>
It works for welcome page due to this
<mvc:view-controller path="/app" view-name="welcome"/>

Answer 3

I think the view needs to be in views/helloworld.jsp and not in views/helloworld/helloworld.jsp

Answer 4

You should set view Name as
mav.setViewName("/helloWorld/helloWorld");

Answer 5

You should change "mvc-config" to yourname-servlet.xml" yourname should be match with your servlet name in ur web.xml file that in ur case should be myservlet-servlet.xml because the spring dispatcher servlet look for the file with "-servlet" extension file name in WEB-INF folder.
and in your myservlet-servlet.xml file for suffix part you should say in this way : "WEB-INF/yourfoldername(e.g. view)" till your controller look for ur view name that u mentioned in ur controller method (e.g ModelAndView("hello")).

Answer 6

As you have following configuration:
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views/"/>
<property name="suffix" value=".jsp"/>
</bean>
and your controller returning clean view name.
Verify your view files exists inside /WEB-INF/views/ while you run application.