The form tag library comes bundled in spring-webmvc.jar. The library descriptor is called spring-form.tld.

To use the tags from this library, add the following directive to the top of your JSP page:

<%@ taglib prefix="form" uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags/form" %>

where form is the tag name prefix you want to use for the tags from this library.

This tag renders an HTML form tag and exposes a binding path to inner tags for binding. It puts the command object in the PageContext so that the command object can be accessed by inner tags. All the other tags in this library are nested tags of the form tag.

Let’s assume we have a domain object called User. It is a JavaBean with properties such as firstName and lastName. We will use it as the form backing object of our form controller which returns form.jsp. Below is an example of what form.jsp would look like:

<form:form>
    <table>
        <tr>
            <td>First Name:</td>
            <td><form:input path="firstName" /></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>Last Name:</td>
            <td><form:input path="lastName" /></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td colspan="2">
                <input type="submit" value="Save Changes" />
            </td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</form:form>

The firstName and lastName values are retrieved from the command object placed in the PageContext by the page controller. Keep reading to see more complex examples of how inner tags are used with the form tag.

The generated HTML looks like a standard form:

<form method="POST">
    <table>
        <tr>
            <td>First Name:</td>
            <td><input name="firstName" type="text" value="Harry"/></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>Last Name:</td>
            <td><input name="lastName" type="text" value="Potter"/></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td colspan="2">
                <input type="submit" value="Save Changes" />
            </td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</form>

The preceding JSP assumes that the variable name of the form backing object is 'command'. If you have put the form backing object into the model under another name (definitely a best practice), then you can bind the form to the named variable like so:

<form:form commandName="user">
    <table>
        <tr>
            <td>First Name:</td>
            <td><form:input path="firstName" /></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>Last Name:</td>
            <td><form:input path="lastName" /></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td colspan="2">
                <input type="submit" value="Save Changes" />
            </td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</form:form>

This tag renders an HTML input tag using the bound value and type=text by default. For an example of this tag, see the section called “The form tag”. Starting with Spring 3.1 you can use other types such HTML5-specific types like email, tel, date, and others.

This tag renders an HTML input tag with type checkbox.

Let’s assume our User has preferences such as newsletter subscription and a list of hobbies. Below is an example of the Preferences class:

public class Preferences {

    private boolean receiveNewsletter;
    private String[] interests;
    private String favouriteWord;

    public boolean isReceiveNewsletter() {
        return receiveNewsletter;
    }

    public void setReceiveNewsletter(boolean receiveNewsletter) {
        this.receiveNewsletter = receiveNewsletter;
    }

    public String[] getInterests() {
        return interests;
    }

    public void setInterests(String[] interests) {
        this.interests = interests;
    }

    public String getFavouriteWord() {
        return favouriteWord;
    }

    public void setFavouriteWord(String favouriteWord) {
        this.favouriteWord = favouriteWord;
    }
}

The form.jsp would look like:

<form:form>
    <table>
        <tr>
            <td>Subscribe to newsletter?:</td>
            <%-- Approach 1: Property is of type java.lang.Boolean --%>
            <td><form:checkbox path="preferences.receiveNewsletter"/></td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
            <td>Interests:</td>
            <%-- Approach 2: Property is of an array or of type java.util.Collection --%>
            <td>
                Quidditch: <form:checkbox path="preferences.interests" value="Quidditch"/>
                Herbology: <form:checkbox path="preferences.interests" value="Herbology"/>
                Defence Against the Dark Arts: <form:checkbox path="preferences.interests" value="Defence Against the Dark Arts"/>
            </td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
            <td>Favourite Word:</td>
            <%-- Approach 3: Property is of type java.lang.Object --%>
            <td>
                Magic: <form:checkbox path="preferences.favouriteWord" value="Magic"/>
            </td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</form:form>

There are 3 approaches to the checkbox tag which should meet all your checkbox needs.

Note that regardless of the approach, the same HTML structure is generated. Below is an HTML snippet of some checkboxes:

<tr>
    <td>Interests:</td>
    <td>
        Quidditch: <input name="preferences.interests" type="checkbox" value="Quidditch"/>
        <input type="hidden" value="1" name="_preferences.interests"/>
        Herbology: <input name="preferences.interests" type="checkbox" value="Herbology"/>
        <input type="hidden" value="1" name="_preferences.interests"/>
        Defence Against the Dark Arts: <input name="preferences.interests" type="checkbox" value="Defence Against the Dark Arts"/>
        <input type="hidden" value="1" name="_preferences.interests"/>
    </td>
</tr>

What you might not expect to see is the additional hidden field after each checkbox. When a checkbox in an HTML page is not checked, its value will not be sent to the server as part of the HTTP request parameters once the form is submitted, so we need a workaround for this quirk in HTML in order for Spring form data binding to work. The checkbox tag follows the existing Spring convention of including a hidden parameter prefixed by an underscore ("_") for each checkbox. By doing this, you are effectively telling Spring that "the checkbox was visible in the form and I want my object to which the form data will be bound to reflect the state of the checkbox no matter what".

This tag renders multiple HTML input tags with type checkbox.

Building on the example from the previous checkbox tag section. Sometimes you prefer not to have to list all the possible hobbies in your JSP page. You would rather provide a list at runtime of the available options and pass that in to the tag. That is the purpose of the checkboxes tag. You pass in an Array, a List or a Map containing the available options in the "items" property. Typically the bound property is a collection so it can hold multiple values selected by the user. Below is an example of the JSP using this tag:

<form:form>
    <table>
        <tr>
            <td>Interests:</td>
            <td>
                <%-- Property is of an array or of type java.util.Collection --%>
                <form:checkboxes path="preferences.interests" items="${interestList}"/>
            </td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</form:form>

This example assumes that the "interestList" is a List available as a model attribute containing strings of the values to be selected from. In the case where you use a Map, the map entry key will be used as the value and the map entry’s value will be used as the label to be displayed. You can also use a custom object where you can provide the property names for the value using "itemValue" and the label using "itemLabel".

This tag renders an HTML input tag with type radio.

A typical usage pattern will involve multiple tag instances bound to the same property but with different values.

<tr>
    <td>Sex:</td>
    <td>
        Male: <form:radiobutton path="sex" value="M"/> <br/>
        Female: <form:radiobutton path="sex" value="F"/>
    </td>
</tr>

This tag renders multiple HTML input tags with type radio.

Just like the checkboxes tag above, you might want to pass in the available options as a runtime variable. For this usage you would use the radiobuttons tag. You pass in an Array, a List or a Map containing the available options in the "items" property. In the case where you use a Map, the map entry key will be used as the value and the map entry’s value will be used as the label to be displayed. You can also use a custom object where you can provide the property names for the value using "itemValue" and the label using "itemLabel".

<tr>
    <td>Sex:</td>
    <td><form:radiobuttons path="sex" items="${sexOptions}"/></td>
</tr>

This tag renders an HTML input tag with type password using the bound value.

<tr>
    <td>Password:</td>
    <td>
        <form:password path="password" />
    </td>
</tr>

Please note that by default, the password value is not shown. If you do want the password value to be shown, then set the value of the 'showPassword' attribute to true, like so.

<tr>
    <td>Password:</td>
    <td>
        <form:password path="password" value="^76525bvHGq" showPassword="true" />
    </td>
</tr>

This tag renders an HTML select element. It supports data binding to the selected option as well as the use of nested option and options tags.

Let’s assume a User has a list of skills.

<tr>
    <td>Skills:</td>
    <td><form:select path="skills" items="${skills}"/></td>
</tr>

If the User's skill were in Herbology, the HTML source of the Skills row would look like:

<tr>
    <td>Skills:</td>
    <td>
        <select name="skills" multiple="true">
            <option value="Potions">Potions</option>
            <option value="Herbology" selected="selected">Herbology</option>
            <option value="Quidditch">Quidditch</option>
        </select>
    </td>
</tr>

This tag renders an HTML option. It sets selected as appropriate based on the bound value.

<tr>
    <td>House:</td>
    <td>
        <form:select path="house">
            <form:option value="Gryffindor"/>
            <form:option value="Hufflepuff"/>
            <form:option value="Ravenclaw"/>
            <form:option value="Slytherin"/>
        </form:select>
    </td>
</tr>

If the User's house was in Gryffindor, the HTML source of the House row would look like:

<tr>
    <td>House:</td>
    <td>
        <select name="house">
            <option value="Gryffindor" selected="selected">Gryffindor</option>
            <option value="Hufflepuff">Hufflepuff</option>
            <option value="Ravenclaw">Ravenclaw</option>
            <option value="Slytherin">Slytherin</option>
        </select>
    </td>
</tr>

This tag renders a list of HTML option tags. It sets the selected attribute as appropriate based on the bound value.

<tr>
    <td>Country:</td>
    <td>
        <form:select path="country">
            <form:option value="-" label="--Please Select"/>
            <form:options items="${countryList}" itemValue="code" itemLabel="name"/>
        </form:select>
    </td>
</tr>

If the User lived in the UK, the HTML source of the Country row would look like:

<tr>
    <td>Country:</td>
    <td>
        <select name="country">
            <option value="-">--Please Select</option>
            <option value="AT">Austria</option>
            <option value="UK" selected="selected">United Kingdom</option>
            <option value="US">United States</option>
        </select>
    </td>
</tr>

As the example shows, the combined usage of an option tag with the options tag generates the same standard HTML, but allows you to explicitly specify a value in the JSP that is for display only (where it belongs) such as the default string in the example: "-- Please Select".

The items attribute is typically populated with a collection or array of item objects. itemValue and itemLabel simply refer to bean properties of those item objects, if specified; otherwise, the item objects themselves will be stringified. Alternatively, you may specify a Map of items, in which case the map keys are interpreted as option values and the map values correspond to option labels. If itemValue and/or itemLabel happen to be specified as well, the item value property will apply to the map key and the item label property will apply to the map value.

This tag renders an HTML textarea.

<tr>
    <td>Notes:</td>
    <td><form:textarea path="notes" rows="3" cols="20" /></td>
    <td><form:errors path="notes" /></td>
</tr>

This tag renders an HTML input tag with type hidden using the bound value. To submit an unbound hidden value, use the HTML input tag with type hidden.

<form:hidden path="house" />

If we choose to submit the house value as a hidden one, the HTML would look like:

<input name="house" type="hidden" value="Gryffindor"/>

This tag renders field errors in an HTML span tag. It provides access to the errors created in your controller or those that were created by any validators associated with your controller.

Let’s assume we want to display all error messages for the firstName and lastName fields once we submit the form. We have a validator for instances of the User class called UserValidator.

public class UserValidator implements Validator {

    public boolean supports(Class candidate) {
        return User.class.isAssignableFrom(candidate);
    }

    public void validate(Object obj, Errors errors) {
        ValidationUtils.rejectIfEmptyOrWhitespace(errors, "firstName", "required", "Field is required.");
        ValidationUtils.rejectIfEmptyOrWhitespace(errors, "lastName", "required", "Field is required.");
    }
}

The form.jsp would look like:

<form:form>
    <table>
        <tr>
            <td>First Name:</td>
            <td><form:input path="firstName" /></td>
            <%-- Show errors for firstName field --%>
            <td><form:errors path="firstName" /></td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
            <td>Last Name:</td>
            <td><form:input path="lastName" /></td>
            <%-- Show errors for lastName field --%>
            <td><form:errors path="lastName" /></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td colspan="3">
                <input type="submit" value="Save Changes" />
            </td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</form:form>

If we submit a form with empty values in the firstName and lastName fields, this is what the HTML would look like:

<form method="POST">
    <table>
        <tr>
            <td>First Name:</td>
            <td><input name="firstName" type="text" value=""/></td>
            <%-- Associated errors to firstName field displayed --%>
            <td><span name="firstName.errors">Field is required.</span></td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
            <td>Last Name:</td>
            <td><input name="lastName" type="text" value=""/></td>
            <%-- Associated errors to lastName field displayed --%>
            <td><span name="lastName.errors">Field is required.</span></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td colspan="3">
                <input type="submit" value="Save Changes" />
            </td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</form>

What if we want to display the entire list of errors for a given page? The example below shows that the errors tag also supports some basic wildcarding functionality.

The example below will display a list of errors at the top of the page, followed by field-specific errors next to the fields:

<form:form>
    <form:errors path="*" cssClass="errorBox" />
    <table>
        <tr>
            <td>First Name:</td>
            <td><form:input path="firstName" /></td>
            <td><form:errors path="firstName" /></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td>Last Name:</td>
            <td><form:input path="lastName" /></td>
            <td><form:errors path="lastName" /></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td colspan="3">
                <input type="submit" value="Save Changes" />
            </td>
        </tr>
    </table>
</form:form>

The HTML would look like:

<form method="POST">
    <span name="*.errors" class="errorBox">Field is required.<br/>Field is required.</span>
    <table>
        <tr>
            <td>First Name:</td>
            <td><input name="firstName" type="text" value=""/></td>
            <td><span name="firstName.errors">Field is required.</span></td>
        </tr>

        <tr>
            <td>Last Name:</td>
            <td><input name="lastName" type="text" value=""/></td>
            <td><span name="lastName.errors">Field is required.</span></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
            <td colspan="3">
                <input type="submit" value="Save Changes" />
            </td>
        </tr>
</form>

A key principle of REST is the use of the Uniform Interface. This means that all resources (URLs) can be manipulated using the same four HTTP methods: GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE. For each method, the HTTP specification defines the exact semantics. For instance, a GET should always be a safe operation, meaning that is has no side effects, and a PUT or DELETE should be idempotent, meaning that you can repeat these operations over and over again, but the end result should be the same. While HTTP defines these four methods, HTML only supports two: GET and POST. Fortunately, there are two possible workarounds: you can either use JavaScript to do your PUT or DELETE, or simply do a POST with the real method as an additional parameter (modeled as a hidden input field in an HTML form). This latter trick is what Spring’s HiddenHttpMethodFilter does. This filter is a plain Servlet Filter and therefore it can be used in combination with any web framework (not just Spring MVC). Simply add this filter to your web.xml, and a POST with a hidden _method parameter will be converted into the corresponding HTTP method request.

To support HTTP method conversion the Spring MVC form tag was updated to support setting the HTTP method. For example, the following snippet taken from the updated Petclinic sample

<form:form method="delete">
    <p class="submit"><input type="submit" value="Delete Pet"/></p>
</form:form>

This will actually perform an HTTP POST, with the real DELETE method hidden behind a request parameter, to be picked up by the HiddenHttpMethodFilter, as defined in web.xml:

<filter>
    <filter-name>httpMethodFilter</filter-name>
    <filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.HiddenHttpMethodFilter</filter-class>
</filter>

<filter-mapping>
    <filter-name>httpMethodFilter</filter-name>
    <servlet-name>petclinic</servlet-name>
</filter-mapping>

The corresponding @Controller method is shown below:

@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.DELETE)
public String deletePet(@PathVariable int ownerId, @PathVariable int petId) {
    this.clinic.deletePet(petId);
    return "redirect:/owners/" + ownerId;
}

Starting with Spring 3, the Spring form tag library allows entering dynamic attributes, which means you can enter any HTML5 specific attributes.

In Spring 3.1, the form input tag supports entering a type attribute other than text. This is intended to allow rendering new HTML5 specific input types such as email, date, range, and others. Note that entering type=text is not required since text is the default type.

The UrlBasedViewResolver instantiates the given viewClass for each view it has to resolve.

<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.UrlBasedViewResolver">
    <property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles3.TilesView"/>
</bean>

The ResourceBundleViewResolver has to be provided with a property file containing viewnames and viewclasses the resolver can use:

<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.ResourceBundleViewResolver">
    <property name="basename" value="views"/>
</bean>

...
welcomeView.(class)=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles3.TilesView
welcomeView.url=welcome (this is the name of a Tiles definition)

vetsView.(class)=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles3.TilesView
vetsView.url=vetsView (again, this is the name of a Tiles definition)

findOwnersForm.(class)=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.JstlView
findOwnersForm.url=/WEB-INF/jsp/findOwners.jsp
...

As you can see, when using the ResourceBundleViewResolver, you can easily mix different view technologies.

Note that the TilesView class supports JSTL (the JSP Standard Tag Library) out of the box.

As an advanced feature, Spring also supports two special Tiles PreparerFactory implementations. Check out the Tiles documentation for details on how to use ViewPreparer references in your Tiles definition files.

Specify SimpleSpringPreparerFactory to autowire ViewPreparer instances based on specified preparer classes, applying Spring’s container callbacks as well as applying configured Spring BeanPostProcessors. If Spring’s context-wide annotation-config has been activated, annotations in ViewPreparer classes will be automatically detected and applied. Note that this expects preparer classes in the Tiles definition files, just like the default PreparerFactory does.

Specify SpringBeanPreparerFactory to operate on specified preparer names instead of classes, obtaining the corresponding Spring bean from the DispatcherServlet’s application context. The full bean creation process will be in the control of the Spring application context in this case, allowing for the use of explicit dependency injection configuration, scoped beans etc. Note that you need to define one Spring bean definition per preparer name (as used in your Tiles definitions).

<bean id="tilesConfigurer" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles3.TilesConfigurer">
    <property name="definitions">
        <list>
            <value>/WEB-INF/defs/general.xml</value>
            <value>/WEB-INF/defs/widgets.xml</value>
            <value>/WEB-INF/defs/administrator.xml</value>
            <value>/WEB-INF/defs/customer.xml</value>
            <value>/WEB-INF/defs/templates.xml</value>
        </list>
    </property>

    <!-- resolving preparer names as Spring bean definition names -->
    <property name="preparerFactoryClass"
            value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles3.SpringBeanPreparerFactory"/>

</bean>

This file is completely optional, but if specified, contains the values that are passed to the Velocity runtime in order to configure velocity itself. Only required for advanced configurations, if you need this file, specify its location on the VelocityConfigurer bean definition above.

<bean id="velocityConfig" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.velocity.VelocityConfigurer">
    <property name="configLocation" value="/WEB-INF/velocity.properties"/>
</bean>

Alternatively, you can specify velocity properties directly in the bean definition for the Velocity config bean by replacing the "configLocation" property with the following inline properties.

<bean id="velocityConfig" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.velocity.VelocityConfigurer">
    <property name="velocityProperties">
        <props>
            <prop key="resource.loader">file</prop>
            <prop key="file.resource.loader.class">
                org.apache.velocity.runtime.resource.loader.FileResourceLoader
            </prop>
            <prop key="file.resource.loader.path">${webapp.root}/WEB-INF/velocity</prop>
            <prop key="file.resource.loader.cache">false</prop>
        </props>
    </property>
</bean>

Refer to the API documentation for Spring configuration of Velocity, or the Velocity documentation for examples and definitions of the 'velocity.properties' file itself.

FreeMarker Settings and SharedVariables can be passed directly to the FreeMarker Configuration object managed by Spring by setting the appropriate bean properties on the FreeMarkerConfigurer bean. The freemarkerSettings property requires a java.util.Properties object and the freemarkerVariables property requires a java.util.Map.

<bean id="freemarkerConfig" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.freemarker.FreeMarkerConfigurer">
    <property name="templateLoaderPath" value="/WEB-INF/freemarker/"/>
    <property name="freemarkerVariables">
        <map>
            <entry key="xml_escape" value-ref="fmXmlEscape"/>
        </map>
    </property>
</bean>

<bean id="fmXmlEscape" class="freemarker.template.utility.XmlEscape"/>

See the FreeMarker documentation for details of settings and variables as they apply to the Configuration object.

A standard set of macros are maintained within the spring-webmvc.jar file for both languages, so they are always available to a suitably configured application.

Some of the macros defined in the Spring libraries are considered internal (private) but no such scoping exists in the macro definitions making all macros visible to calling code and user templates. The following sections concentrate only on the macros you need to be directly calling from within your templates. If you wish to view the macro code directly, the files are called spring.vm / spring.ftl and are in the packages org.springframework.web.servlet.view.velocity or org.springframework.web.servlet.view.freemarker respectively.

In your html forms (vm / ftl templates) that act as the formView for a Spring form controller, you can use code similar to the following to bind to field values and display error messages for each input field in similar fashion to the JSP equivalent. Note that the name of the command object is "command" by default, but can be overridden in your MVC configuration by setting the commandName bean property on your form controller. Example code is shown below for the personFormV and personFormF views configured earlier;

<!-- velocity macros are automatically available -->
<html>
    ...
    <form action="" method="POST">
        Name:
        #springBind( "command.name" )
        <input type="text"
            name="${status.expression}"
            value="$!status.value" /><br>
        #foreach($error in $status.errorMessages) <b>$error</b> <br> #end
        <br>
        ...
        <input type="submit" value="submit"/>
    </form>
    ...
</html>

<!-- freemarker macros have to be imported into a namespace. We strongly
recommend sticking to spring -->
<#import "/spring.ftl" as spring />
<html>
    ...
    <form action="" method="POST">
        Name:
        <@spring.bind "command.name" />
        <input type="text"
            name="${spring.status.expression}"
            value="${spring.status.value?default("")}" /><br>
        <#list spring.status.errorMessages as error> <b>${error}</b> <br> </#list>
        <br>
        ...
        <input type="submit" value="submit"/>
    </form>
    ...
</html>

#springBind / <@spring.bind> requires a path argument which consists of the name of your command object (it will be command unless you changed it in your FormController properties) followed by a period and the name of the field on the command object you wish to bind to. Nested fields can be used too such as "command.address.street". The bind macro assumes the default HTML escaping behavior specified by the ServletContext parameter defaultHtmlEscape in web.xml

The optional form of the macro called #springBindEscaped / <@spring.bindEscaped> takes a second argument and explicitly specifies whether HTML escaping should be used in the status error messages or values. Set to true or false as required. Additional form handling macros simplify the use of HTML escaping and these macros should be used wherever possible. They are explained in the next section.

Additional convenience macros for both languages simplify both binding and form generation (including validation error display). It is never necessary to use these macros to generate form input fields, and they can be mixed and matched with simple HTML or calls direct to the spring bind macros highlighted previously.

The following table of available macros show the VTL and FTL definitions and the parameter list that each takes.

The parameters to any of the above macros have consistent meanings:

Examples of the macros are outlined below some in FTL and some in VTL. Where usage differences exist between the two languages, they are explained in the notes.

<!-- the Name field example from above using form macros in VTL -->
...
Name:
#springFormInput("command.name" "")<br>
#springShowErrors("<br>" "")<br>

<@spring.formInput "command.name"/>
<@spring.showErrors "<br>"/>

Name:
<input type="text" name="name" value="">
<br>
    <b>required</b>
<br>
<br>

...
Town:
<@spring.formRadioButtons "command.address.town", cityMap, "" /><br><br>

Town:
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="London">London</input>
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="Paris" checked="checked">Paris</input>
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="New York">New York</input>

protected Map referenceData(HttpServletRequest request) throws Exception {
    Map cityMap = new LinkedHashMap();
    cityMap.put("LDN", "London");
    cityMap.put("PRS", "Paris");
    cityMap.put("NYC", "New York");

    Map m = new HashMap();
    m.put("cityMap", cityMap);
    return m;
}

Town:
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="LDN">London</input>
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="PRS" checked="checked">Paris</input>
<input type="radio" name="address.town" value="NYC">New York</input>

Default usage of the form macros above will result in HTML tags that are HTML 4.01 compliant and that use the default value for HTML escaping defined in your web.xml as used by Spring’s bind support. In order to make the tags XHTML compliant or to override the default HTML escaping value, you can specify two variables in your template (or in your model where they will be visible to your templates). The advantage of specifying them in the templates is that they can be changed to different values later in the template processing to provide different behavior for different fields in your form.

To switch to XHTML compliance for your tags, specify a value of true for a model/context variable named xhtmlCompliant:

# for Velocity..
#set($springXhtmlCompliant = true)

<-- for FreeMarker -->
<#assign xhtmlCompliant = true in spring>

Any tags generated by the Spring macros will now be XHTML compliant after processing this directive.

In similar fashion, HTML escaping can be specified per field:

<#-- until this point, default HTML escaping is used -->

<#assign htmlEscape = true in spring>
<#-- next field will use HTML escaping -->
<@spring.formInput "command.name" />

<#assign htmlEscape = false in spring>
<#-- all future fields will be bound with HTML escaping off -->

Configuration is standard for a simple Spring application. The dispatcher servlet config file contains a reference to a ViewResolver, URL mappings and a single controller bean…

<bean id="homeController"class="xslt.HomeController"/>

The controller logic is encapsulated in a subclass of AbstractController, with the handler method being defined like so…

protected ModelAndView handleRequestInternal(HttpServletRequest request,
        HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {

    Map map = new HashMap();
    List wordList = new ArrayList();

    wordList.add("hello");
    wordList.add("world");

    map.put("wordList", wordList);

    return new ModelAndView("home", map);
}

So far we’ve done nothing that’s XSLT specific. The model data has been created in the same way as you would for any other Spring MVC application. Depending on the configuration of the application now, that list of words could be rendered by JSP/JSTL by having them added as request attributes, or they could be handled by Velocity by adding the object to the VelocityContext. In order to have XSLT render them, they of course have to be converted into an XML document somehow. There are software packages available that will automatically domify an object graph, but within Spring, you have complete flexibility to create the DOM from your model in any way you choose. This prevents the transformation of XML playing too great a part in the structure of your model data which is a danger when using tools to manage the domification process.

In order to create a DOM document from our list of words or any other model data, we must subclass the (provided) org.springframework.web.servlet.view.xslt.AbstractXsltView class. In doing so, we must also typically implement the abstract method createXsltSource(..) method. The first parameter passed to this method is our model map. Here’s the complete listing of the HomePage class in our trivial word application:

package xslt;

// imports omitted for brevity

public class HomePage extends AbstractXsltView {

    protected Source createXsltSource(Map model, String rootName,
            HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {

        Document document = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder().newDocument();
        Element root = document.createElement(rootName);

        List words = (List) model.get("wordList");
        for (Iterator it = words.iterator(); it.hasNext();) {
            String nextWord = (String) it.next();
            Element wordNode = document.createElement("word");
            Text textNode = document.createTextNode(nextWord);
            wordNode.appendChild(textNode);
            root.appendChild(wordNode);
        }
        return new DOMSource(root);
    }

}

A series of parameter name/value pairs can optionally be defined by your subclass which will be added to the transformation object. The parameter names must match those defined in your XSLT template declared with <xsl:param name="myParam">defaultValue</xsl:param>. To specify the parameters, override the getParameters() method of the AbstractXsltView class and return a Map of the name/value pairs. If your parameters need to derive information from the current request, you can override the getParameters(HttpServletRequest request) method instead.

The views.properties file (or equivalent xml definition if you’re using an XML based view resolver as we did in the Velocity examples above) looks like this for the one-view application that is My First Words:

home.(class)=xslt.HomePage
home.stylesheetLocation=/WEB-INF/xsl/home.xslt
home.root=words

Here, you can see how the view is tied in with the HomePage class just written which handles the model domification in the first property '.(class)'. The 'stylesheetLocation' property points to the XSLT file which will handle the XML transformation into HTML for us and the final property '.root' is the name that will be used as the root of the XML document. This gets passed to the HomePage class above in the second parameter to the createXsltSource(..) method(s).

Finally, we have the XSLT code used for transforming the above document. As shown in the above 'views.properties' file, the stylesheet is called 'home.xslt' and it lives in the war file in the 'WEB-INF/xsl' directory.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

    <xsl:output method="html" omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>

    <xsl:template match="/">
        <html>
            <head><title>Hello!</title></head>
            <body>
                <h1>My First Words</h1>
                <xsl:apply-templates/>
            </body>
        </html>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="word">
        <xsl:value-of select="."/><br/>
    </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

First, let’s amend the views.properties file (or xml equivalent) and add a simple view definition for both document types. The entire file now looks like this with the XSLT view shown from earlier:

home.(class)=xslt.HomePage
home.stylesheetLocation=/WEB-INF/xsl/home.xslt
home.root=words

xl.(class)=excel.HomePage

pdf.(class)=pdf.HomePage

If you want to start with a template spreadsheet or a fillable PDF form to add your model data to, specify the location as the url property in the view definition

The controller code we’ll use remains exactly the same from the XSLT example earlier other than to change the name of the view to use. Of course, you could be clever and have this selected based on a URL parameter or some other logic - proof that Spring really is very good at decoupling the views from the controllers!

Exactly as we did for the XSLT example, we’ll subclass suitable abstract classes in order to implement custom behavior in generating our output documents. For Excel, this involves writing a subclass of org.springframework.web.servlet.view.document.AbstractExcelView (for Excel files generated by POI) or org.springframework.web.servlet.view.document.AbstractJExcelView (for JExcelApi-generated Excel files) and implementing the buildExcelDocument() method.

Here’s the complete listing for our POI Excel view which displays the word list from the model map in consecutive rows of the first column of a new spreadsheet:

package excel;

// imports omitted for brevity

public class HomePage extends AbstractExcelView {

    protected void buildExcelDocument(Map model, HSSFWorkbook wb, HttpServletRequest req,
            HttpServletResponse resp) throws Exception {

        HSSFSheet sheet;
        HSSFRow sheetRow;
        HSSFCell cell;

        // Go to the first sheet
        // getSheetAt: only if wb is created from an existing document
        // sheet = wb.getSheetAt(0);
        sheet = wb.createSheet("Spring");
        sheet.setDefaultColumnWidth((short) 12);

        // write a text at A1
        cell = getCell(sheet, 0, 0);
        setText(cell, "Spring-Excel test");

        List words = (List) model.get("wordList");
        for (int i=0; i < words.size(); i++) {
            cell = getCell(sheet, 2+i, 0);
            setText(cell, (String) words.get(i));
        }
    }

}

And the following is a view generating the same Excel file, now using JExcelApi:

package excel;

// imports omitted for brevity

public class HomePage extends AbstractJExcelView {

    protected void buildExcelDocument(Map model, WritableWorkbook wb,
            HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {

        WritableSheet sheet = wb.createSheet("Spring", 0);

        sheet.addCell(new Label(0, 0, "Spring-Excel test"));

        List words = (List) model.get("wordList");
        for (int i = 0; i < words.size(); i++) {
            sheet.addCell(new Label(2+i, 0, (String) words.get(i)));
        }
    }
}

Note the differences between the APIs. We’ve found that the JExcelApi is somewhat more intuitive, and furthermore, JExcelApi has slightly better image-handling capabilities. There have been memory problems with large Excel files when using JExcelApi however.

If you now amend the controller such that it returns xl as the name of the view ( return new ModelAndView("xl", map);) and run your application again, you should find that the Excel spreadsheet is created and downloaded automatically when you request the same page as before.

The PDF version of the word list is even simpler. This time, the class extends org.springframework.web.servlet.view.document.AbstractPdfView and implements the buildPdfDocument() method as follows:

package pdf;

// imports omitted for brevity

public class PDFPage extends AbstractPdfView {

    protected void buildPdfDocument(Map model, Document doc, PdfWriter writer,
        HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp) throws Exception {
        List words = (List) model.get("wordList");
        for (int i=0; i<words.size(); i++) {
            doc.add( new Paragraph((String) words.get(i)));
        }
    }

}

Once again, amend the controller to return the pdf view with return new ModelAndView("pdf", map);, and reload the URL in your application. This time a PDF document should appear listing each of the words in the model map.

Typically, you will use the ResourceBundleViewResolver to map view names to view classes and files in a properties file.

<bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.ResourceBundleViewResolver">
    <property name="basename" value="views"/>
</bean>

Here we’ve configured an instance of the ResourceBundleViewResolver class that will look for view mappings in the resource bundle with base name views. (The content of this file is described in the next section.)

The Spring Framework contains five different View implementations for JasperReports, four of which correspond to one of the four output formats supported by JasperReports, and one that allows for the format to be determined at runtime:

Mapping one of these classes to a view name and a report file is a matter of adding the appropriate entries in the resource bundle configured in the previous section as shown here:

simpleReport.(class)=org.springframework.web.servlet.view.jasperreports.JasperReportsPdfView
simpleReport.url=/WEB-INF/reports/DataSourceReport.jasper

Here you can see that the view with name simpleReport is mapped to the JasperReportsPdfView class, causing the output of this report to be rendered in PDF format. The url property of the view is set to the location of the underlying report file.

JasperReports has two distinct types of report file: the design file, which has a .jrxml extension, and the compiled report file, which has a .jasper extension. Typically, you use the JasperReports Ant task to compile your .jrxml design file into a .jasper file before deploying it into your application. With the Spring Framework you can map either of these files to your report file and the framework will take care of compiling the .jrxml file on the fly for you. You should note that after a .jrxml file is compiled by the Spring Framework, the compiled report is cached for the lifetime of the application. Thus, to make changes to the file you will need to restart your application.

The JasperReportsMultiFormatView allows for the report format to be specified at runtime. The actual rendering of the report is delegated to one of the other JasperReports view classes - the JasperReportsMultiFormatView class simply adds a wrapper layer that allows for the exact implementation to be specified at runtime.

The JasperReportsMultiFormatView class introduces two concepts: the format key and the discriminator key. The JasperReportsMultiFormatView class uses the mapping key to look up the actual view implementation class, and it uses the format key to lookup up the mapping key. From a coding perspective you add an entry to your model with the format key as the key and the mapping key as the value, for example:

public ModelAndView handleSimpleReportMulti(HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {

    String uri = request.getRequestURI();
    String format = uri.substring(uri.lastIndexOf(".") + 1);

    Map model = getModel();
    model.put("format", format);

    return new ModelAndView("simpleReportMulti", model);

}

In this example, the mapping key is determined from the extension of the request URI and is added to the model under the default format key: format. If you wish to use a different format key then you can configure this using the formatKey property of the JasperReportsMultiFormatView class.

By default the following mapping key mappings are configured in JasperReportsMultiFormatView:

So in the example above a request to URI /foo/myReport.pdf would be mapped to the JasperReportsPdfView class. You can override the mapping key to view class mappings using the formatMappings property of JasperReportsMultiFormatView.

To control which sub-report files are included in a master report using Spring, your report file must be configured to accept sub-reports from an external source. To do this you declare a parameter in your report file like so:

<parameter name="ProductsSubReport" class="net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JasperReport"/>

Then, you define your sub-report to use this sub-report parameter:

<subreport>
    <reportElement isPrintRepeatedValues="false" x="5" y="25" width="325"
        height="20" isRemoveLineWhenBlank="true" backcolor="#ffcc99"/>
    <subreportParameter name="City">
        <subreportParameterExpression><![CDATA[$F{city}]]></subreportParameterExpression>
    </subreportParameter>
    <dataSourceExpression><![CDATA[$P{SubReportData}]]></dataSourceExpression>
    <subreportExpression class="net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JasperReport">
        <![CDATA[$P{ProductsSubReport}]]></subreportExpression>
</subreport>

This defines a master report file that expects the sub-report to be passed in as an instance of net.sf.jasperreports.engine.JasperReports under the parameter ProductsSubReport. When configuring your Jasper view class, you can instruct Spring to load a report file and pass it into the JasperReports engine as a sub-report using the subReportUrls property:

<property name="subReportUrls">
    <map>
        <entry key="ProductsSubReport" value="/WEB-INF/reports/subReportChild.jrxml"/>
    </map>
</property>

Here, the key of the Map corresponds to the name of the sub-report parameter in the report design file, and the entry is the URL of the report file. Spring will load this report file, compiling it if necessary, and pass it into the JasperReports engine under the given key.

This step is entirely optional when using Spring to configure your sub-reports. If you wish, you can still configure the data source for your sub-reports using static queries. However, if you want Spring to convert data returned in your ModelAndView into instances of JRDataSource then you need to specify which of the parameters in your ModelAndView Spring should convert. To do this, configure the list of parameter names using the subReportDataKeys property of your chosen view class:

<property name="subReportDataKeys" value="SubReportData"/>

Here, the key you supply must correspond to both the key used in your ModelAndView and the key used in your report design file.