Spring 3 MVC Handle multiple form submit with a single Controller

Question

Spring 3 MVC Handle multiple form submit with a Controller.

I am developing JSP page with multiple forms. 1) Search Customer, 2) Search Product, 3) Print Something etc. I've a different form bind object tied to each form and my controller code looks similar to below

  @Controller
  @RequestMapping(value="/search.do")
  public class SearchController {

    @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public String pageLoad(ModelMap modelMap) {
      modelMap.addAttribute("productSearch", new ProductSearchCriteria());
        modelMap.addAttribute("customerSearch", new CustomerSearchCriteria());
        modelMap.addAttribute("print", new PrintForm());
    }

    @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST)
    public ModelAndView searchProducts(@ModelAttribute("productSearch") ProductSearchCriteria productSearchCriteria,
            BindingResult result, SessionStatus status) {
            //Do Product search
            return modelAndView;
    }

    @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST)
    public ModelAndView searchCustomers(@ModelAttribute("customerSearch") CustomerSearchCriteria customerSearchCriteria,
            BindingResult result, SessionStatus status) {
            //Do Customer search
            return modelAndView;
    }

    @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST)
    public ModelAndView printSomething(@ModelAttribute("print") PrintForm printForm,
            BindingResult result, SessionStatus status) {
            //Print something
            return modelAndView;
    }
  }

Above certainly doesn't work as I assumed it would. I get exception saying 'Request method 'POST' not supported'. If I have only one POST method inside above controller say searchProducts it works well. But it won't with more than one methods with POST. I also tried adding hidden parameter in JSP and changing method signatures similar to below only to get the same exception again.

  @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST, params="pageAction=searchProduct")
    public ModelAndView searchProducts(@ModelAttribute("productSearch") ProductSearchCriteria productSearchCriteria,
            BindingResult result, SessionStatus status) {
            //Do Product search
            return modelAndView;
   }

Can anyone please suggest correct way to achieve above? Also any reference to source material or further reading will be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

EDIT #1: The above approach with params="pageAction=searchProduct" works perfectly as far as you get your hidden parameter right in JSP (see comment below). In addition to that, answers by @Bozho and @Biju Kunjummen is also very helpful and a good (possibly better?) alternative to tackle multiple form submit.

Answer 1

Your mappings are not completely correct @TMan:

1. The mappings in web.xml are to get Spring Dispatcher servlet to handle your request - eg. like in your case:

   <servlet>
   <servlet-name>appServlet</servlet-name>
   <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
   <init-param>
       <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
       <param-value>classpath:/META-INF/appServlet/servlet-context.xml</param-value>
   </init-param>
   <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
   

   appServlet *.do So now any request to URI's ending with .do will be handled by Spring's DispatcherServlet

2. The controller can have a mapping, like in your case:

   @Controller @RequestMapping(value="/search.do")

But where you have gone wrong is in the RequestMapping for the controller :

@Controller
@RequestMapping(value="/search")

The .do at the end of RequestMapping should not be there, as it is purely for the Dispatcher servlet to be invoked, once that is invoked it will handle dispatching to the correct Controller method, so your call to /search.do will end up with the controller.

3. Now, each method can be annotated with RequestMapping like in your case, with a RequestMethod atribute of RequestMapping, specifying whether to dispatch to the method in case of POST or GET:

   @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET)
   @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST)
   

So when there is a POST to the /search.do URI the appropriate method will be called.

In your case, there are multiple methods annotated with the RequestMethod.POST attribute, so the AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter component of Spring simply doesn't know which method to dispatch to.

There are a couple of things that you can do:

1. put a request mapping for each method, the way suggested by @Bozho: @RequestMapping(value="/customers" method=Request.POST) @RequestMapping(value="/products" method=Request.POST) so now your request URI's would be

   /search/customers.do /search/products.do and you should be doing POST to get the correct dispatch method.

2. Get rid of method=Request.POST all together and depend on the @RequestMapping like above to find the correct method.

3. You can pass an optional params attribute to RequestMapping, which again is a way to help Spring find your correct method to dispatch to:

   @RequestMapping(method=Request.POST, params="customers")

with customers parameters in the request or say products parameters in the request.

The simplest will be option 1 though.

EDIT 1: Adding a reference to a good Spring document - http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/3.0.x/spring-framework-reference/html/mvc.html

Answer 2

When you have multiple forms, why don't you map the three forms to different URLs?

@RequestMapping("/products")
public ModelAndView searchProducts(..)

@RequestMapping("/customers")
public ModelAndView searchCustomers(..)

And have your form actions be pointed at /search/products and /search/customers (no need of the .do)

Answer 3

I've had the same problem: two forms (register and contact) on the same page with two submit buttons. Each form has its own validation by Spring.

I've managed to do this in one Controller:

@RequestMapping(value = "/contactOrRegister.do", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public void contactOrRegisterFormGet(@ModelAttribute("contactForm") ContactForm contactForm, @ModelAttribute("registerForm") RegisterForm registerForm) {
    //-----prepare forms for displaying here----
}

@RequestMapping(value = "/contact.do", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String contactFormPost(@ModelAttribute("contactForm") ContactForm contactForm, BindingResult result, final Model model) {        
    contactValidator.validate(contactForm, result);
    if (result.hasErrors()) {
        model.addAttribute("registerForm", new RegisterForm());
        return "contactOrRegister";
    }
    //--- validation is passed, do submit for contact form here ---
}

@RequestMapping(value = "/register.do", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String registerFormPost(@ModelAttribute("registerForm") RegisterForm registerForm, BindingResult result, final Model model) {        
    registerValidator.validate(registerForm, result);
    if (result.hasErrors()) {
        model.addAttribute("contactForm", new ContactForm());
        return "contactOrRegister";
    }
    //--- validation is passed, do submit for register form here ---
}

I need to create a new form (contact or register) and put it in model when validation is failed because "contactOrRegister" view needs both forms to display. So when "contact" form was submitted and has errors the "register" form content will be erased. This way fits for me.

The contactOrRegister.jsp contains both forms with different action:

 <form:form action="/register.do" modelAttribute="registerForm" method="POST">
    <!-- register form here -->
 </form:form>

 <form:form action="/contact.do" modelAttribute="contactForm" method="POST">
    <!-- contact form here -->
 </form:form>

Answer 4

You can write

@RequestMapping(method = {RequestMethod.GET,RequestMethod.POST})

when using multiple method on the same controller. This is useful when sometimes the user wants to submit the data using GET or when you use return "forward:url"; from another controller.