Data Binding in Spring MVC with Example

Data Binding, as the name itself, is a self-explanatory word. In data binding what we have to do is we have to capture or store the data so that we can bind that data with another resource (for example displaying the data in the frontend part) as per our needs or we can also read the data from a variable and display it as per our requirements. For example, there is a google form, and the user enters all the details in that form and we have to capture/store the data and bind it with the frontend part as per our requirements. In Spring using the data binding concept, we can do the following two tasks

1. We can read from a variable
2. We can write to a variable

So in this article, we are going to see how can we bind the data and display it. We are going to cover the write-to-variable task in this article. 

Setup the Project

We are going to use Spring Tool Suite 4 IDE for this project. Please refer to this article to install STS on your local machine How to Download and Install Spring Tool Suite (Spring Tools 4 for Eclipse) IDE? Go to your STS IDE then create a new maven project, File > New > Maven Project, and choose the following archetype as shown in the below image as follows:  

Add the following maven dependencies and plugin to your pom.xml file. 

<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.springframework/spring-webmvc -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
    <version>5.3.18</version>
</dependency>

<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/javax.servlet/javax.servlet-api -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
    <artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>
    <version>4.0.1</version>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

<!-- plugin -->
<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
            <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>2.6</version>
            <configuration>
                <failOnMissingWebXml>false</failOnMissingWebXml>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

Below is the complete code for the pom.xml file after adding these dependencies.

File: pom.xml 

XML

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
    <groupId>com.geeksforgeeks</groupId>
    <artifactId>simple-calculator</artifactId>
    <packaging>war</packaging>
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <name>simple-calculator Maven Webapp</name>
    <url>http://maven.apache.org</url>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>junit</groupId>
            <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
            <version>3.8.1</version>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>

        <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.springframework/spring-webmvc -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
            <version>5.3.18</version>
        </dependency>

        <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/javax.servlet/javax.servlet-api -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
            <artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>
            <version>4.0.1</version>
            <scope>provided</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <finalName>simple-calculator</finalName>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
                <version>2.6</version>
                <configuration>
                    <failOnMissingWebXml>false</failOnMissingWebXml>
                </configuration>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>
</project>

Configuring Dispatcher Servlet

Before moving into the coding part let’s have a look at the file structure in the below image. 

So at first create an src/main/java folder and inside this folder create a class named CalculatorAppIntilizer and put it inside the com.geeksforgeeks.calculator.config package and extends the AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer class. Refer to the below image.

And whenever you are extending this class, it has some pre abstract methods that we need to provide the implementation. Now inside this class, we have to just write two lines of code to Configure the Dispatcher Servlet. Before that, we have to create another class for the Spring configuration file. So, go to the src/main/java folder and inside this folder create a class named CalculatorAppConfig and put it inside the com.geeksforgeeks.calculator.config package. Below is the code for the CalculatorAppConfig.java file.

File: CalculatorAppConfig.java

Java

package com.geeksforgeeks.calculator.config;

import org.springframework.context.annotation.ComponentScan;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;

@Configuration
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "com.geeksforgeeks.calculator.controllers")
public class CalculatorAppConfig {

}

And below is the complete code for the CalculatorAppIntilizer.java file. Comments are added inside the code to understand the code in more detail.

File: CalculatorAppIntilizer.java

Java

package com.geeksforgeeks.calculator.config;

import org.springframework.web.servlet.support.AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer;

public class CalculatorAppIntilizer extends AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer {

    @Override
    protected Class<?>[] getRootConfigClasses() {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        return null;
    }

    // Registering the Spring config file
    @Override
    protected Class<?>[] getServletConfigClasses() {
        Class aClass[] = { CalculatorAppConfig.class };
        return aClass;
    }

    // Add mapping url
    @Override
    protected String[] getServletMappings() {
        String arr[] = { "/geeksforgeeks.org/*" };
        return arr;
    }

}

Setup ViewResolver

Spring MVC is a Web MVC Framework for building web applications. In generic all MVC frameworks provide a way of working with views. Spring does that via the ViewResolvers, which enables you to render models in the browser without tying the implementation to specific view technology. Read more here: ViewResolver in Spring MVC. So for setting up ViewResolver go to the CalculatorAppConfig.java file and write down the code as follows

@Bean
public InternalResourceViewResolver viewResolver() {
        InternalResourceViewResolver viewResolver = new InternalResourceViewResolver();
        viewResolver.setPrefix("/WEB-INF/view/");
        viewResolver.setSuffix(".jsp");
        return viewResolver;
    }

And below is the updated code for the CalculatorAppConfig.java file after writing the code for setting up the ViewResolver. 

File: Updated CalculatorAppConfig.java

Java

package com.geeksforgeeks.calculator.config;

import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.ComponentScan;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.ViewResolver;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.EnableWebMvc;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver;

@EnableWebMvc
@Configuration
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "com.geeksforgeeks.calculator.controllers")
public class CalculatorAppConfig {

    // setup ViewResolver
    @Bean
    public InternalResourceViewResolver viewResolver() {
        InternalResourceViewResolver viewResolver = new InternalResourceViewResolver();
        viewResolver.setPrefix("/WEB-INF/view/");
        viewResolver.setSuffix(".jsp");
        return viewResolver;
    }

}

Create Controller 

Go to the src/main/java folder and inside this folder create a class named AppController and put it inside the com.geeksforgeeks.calculator.controllers package. Below is the code for the AppController.java file.

File: AppController.java file

Java

package com.geeksforgeeks.calculator.controllers;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ResponseBody;

@Controller
public class AppController {

    @RequestMapping("/home")
    public String showHomePage() {
        return "welcome-page";
    }

}

Create View

Now we have to create a view named “welcome-page” inside the WEB-INF/view folder with the .jsp extension. So go to the src > main > webapp > WEB-INF and create a folder view and inside that folder create a jsp file named welcome-page. So below is the code for the welcome-page.jsp file. 

File: welcome-page.jsp

HTML

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
    <h1 align="center">Data Binding in Spring MVC with Example</h1>

    <hr />

    <form action="process-homepage" method="get">

        <div align="center">


<p>
                <label for="name1">Enter First Name : </label> <input type="text"
                    id="name1" name="firstName" />
            </p>




<p>
                <label for="name2">Enter Last Name : </label> <input type="text"
                    id="name2" name="lastName" />
            </p>



            <input type="submit" value="Bind Data" />

        </div>

    </form>
</body>
</html>

The view is looking like this 

So here we want to put some values inside the label and we want to capture that value so that we can display that value on our next page after clicking on the Capture button. So how to do it? So here we actually binding the data and we have to perform the write-to-variable task. And we can bind the data in the following two ways

1. Using @RequestParam Annotation
2. Using DTO (Data Transfer Object)

You may refer to this article for the full explanation: How to Capture Data using @RequestParam Annotation in Spring. But this is not an efficient approach. So we are going to use DTO (Data Transfer Object) to bind our data. 

Data Binding (write-to-variable)

At first, we have to create a DTO class. So go to the src/main/java folder and inside this folder create a class named NameInfoDTO and put it inside the com.geeksforgeeks.calculator.dto package. Below is the code for the NameInfoDTO.java file. Comments are added inside the code to understand the code in more detail.

File: NameInfoDTO.java

Java

package com.geeksforgeeks.calculator.dto;

public class NameInfoDTO {

    private String firstName;
    private String lastName;

    public String getFirstName() {
        return firstName;
    }

    public void setFirstName(String firstName) {
        this.firstName = firstName;
    }

    public String getLastName() {
        return lastName;
    }

    public void setLastName(String lastName) {
        this.lastName = lastName;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return "NameInfoDTO [firstName=" + firstName + ", lastName=" + lastName + "]";
    }

}

As we have written this line inside the welcome-page.jsp file

<form action="process-homepage" method="get">

So we have to create a controller with the “process-homepage” endpoint. So now come to the AppController.java file again and write down the following code inside this file.

@RequestMapping("/process-homepage")
public String showResultPage(NameInfoDTO nameInfoDTO, Model model) {

        // writing the value to the properties
        // by fetching from the URL
        model.addAttribute("nameInfo", nameInfoDTO);

        return "result-page";
}

Related Article Link: How to Create Your First Model in Spring MVC 

Below is the updated code for the AppController.java file.

File: Updated AppController.java file

Java

package com.geeksforgeeks.calculator.controllers;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;

import com.geeksforgeeks.calculator.dto.NameInfoDTO;

@Controller
public class AppController {

    @RequestMapping("/home")
    public String showHomePage() {
        return "welcome-page";
    }

    @RequestMapping("/process-homepage")
    public String showResultPage(NameInfoDTO nameInfoDTO, Model model) {

        // writing the value to the properties
        // by fetching from the URL
        model.addAttribute("nameInfo", nameInfoDTO);

        return "result-page";
    }

}

Now we have to create another view named “result-page” to display the captured values. So below is the code for the result-page.jsp file. 

File: result-page.jsp

HTML

<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
    <h1 align="center">Data Binding in Spring MVC with Example</h1>
    <hr />


<p>First Name is: ${nameInfo.firstName}</p>




<p>Last Name is: ${nameInfo.lastName}</p>


</body>
</html>

So now we have done with the coding part. Let’s run and test our application. 

Run Your Application

To run our Spring MVC Application right-click on your project > Run As > Run on Server. And run your application as shown in the below image as depicted below as follows:  

After that use the following URL to run your controller

http://localhost:8080/simple-calculator/geeksforgeeks.org/home

Output:

Now let’s put some values inside the label and click on the Bind Data. Suppose here we have put “Amiya” as First Name and “Rout” as Last Name and whenever we click on the “Bind Data” button an URL is generated as below

http://localhost:8080/simple-calculator/geeksforgeeks.org/process-homepage?firstName=Amiya&lastName=Rout

And you can see on the next page the values are displayed.