Allow ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping and @Controller to work together [SPR-4129]

[spring-projects-issues]

Matt Raible opened SPR-4129 and commented

It would be nice if ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping and @Controller could work together. So the URLs could be determined by ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping and you could simply add @Controller and @Autowired to your controllers.

The following URL contains more information on this (missing) feature:

http://forum.springframework.org/showthread.php?p=151750

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Affects: 2.5 RC2

Issue Links:

• ControllerBeanNameHandlerMapping to register all Controllers (and ThrowawayControllers) by their bean name regardless of the format of the name or alias. [SPR-4079] #8757 ControllerBeanNameHandlerMapping to register all Controllers (and ThrowawayControllers) by their bean name regardless of the format of the name or alias.

4 votes, 5 watchers

[spring-projects-issues]

Juergen Hoeller commented

As of Spring 2.5.3, ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping detects @Controller beans by default as well, treating them analogous to MultiActionControllers. Thanks for the suggestion!

This will be available in the next 2.5.3 snapshot (http://static.springframework.org/downloads/nightly/snapshot-download.php?project=SPR). Feel free to give it a try...

Juergen

[spring-projects-issues]

Matt Raible commented

This doesn't seem to work like I expect it to. Here's what I'd expect:

1. Add @Controller scanning to *-servlet.xml:

<context:component-scan base-package="org.appfuse.web.controller"/>

2. Create a class with @Controller annotation:

package org.appfuse.web.controller;

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

@Controller
public class HomeController {

@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET)
public String index() {
    System.out.println("in index...");
    return "home";
}

}

3. This Controller is available at /home.html.

The only way I can get #3 to work is if I add @RequestMapping("/home") to the class. I thought this wouldn't be required anymore? I tried adding the following to my servlet.xml, but it didn't help either:

<bean id="urlMapping" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.support.ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping"/>

Thanks,

Matt

[spring-projects-issues]

Tom Duffey commented

Any response to Matt's comments? I upgraded from 2.5.2 and had to revert back because it didn't work as expected and like Matt I thought the ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping would determine the request mapping path.

[spring-projects-issues]

Keith Donald commented

In Matt's example the index method on HomeController would be mapped to the URL /home/index by the 2.5.3 convention, which I imagine isn't what he wants.

Just to provide more usage examples of this feature, here is an example in the Spring MVC + Web Flow reference application "booking-mvc". You can see the code on-line here: https://springframework.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/springframework/spring-webflow/trunk/spring-webflow-samples/booking-mvc

Specifically see:

@Controller code: https://springframework.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/springframework/spring-webflow/trunk/spring-webflow-samples/booking-mvc/src/main/java/org/springframework/webflow/samples/booking/HotelsController.java

Config:
https://springframework.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/springframework/spring-webflow/trunk/spring-webflow-samples/booking-mvc/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/config/webmvc-config.xml

The URls mapped by convention are then:

/hotels/index
/hotels/search
/hotels/show
/hotels/deleteBooking

But no, /hotels doesn't mapped to to the index method by default... not in 2.5.3 anyway. Is this the convention you want? Perhaps we could employ a convention to map the root controller URL e.g. /home to a "home" method on the HomeController...

[spring-projects-issues]

Matt Raible commented

Thanks Keith - your webmvc-config.xml seems to contain the magic sauce that makes this work as expected.

Adding the following allows /home/index.html to work:

<!-- Enables convention-based request URL mapping to @Controllers e.g. /home/* maps to HomeController -->
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.support.ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping">
	<property name="order" value="1"/>
</bean>

Additionally adding the URL mapping bean below allows /home.html to work:

<!-- Maps all other request URLs to views -->
<bean id="urlMapping" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping">
	<property name="defaultHandler">
		<!-- Selects view names to render based on the request URI: e.g. /index selects "index" -->
		<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.UrlFilenameViewController" />
	</property>
	<property name="order" value="2"/>
</bean>

Is it possible to make these the defaults or would that mess up too much backwards compatibility? The next thing I'm going to ask for is to eliminate @Controller and detect class names that end with Controller. ;-)

Thanks,

Matt

[spring-projects-issues]

Matt Raible commented

BTW, is there anything being done to allow extensionless URLs? I'd love to have /home/index or home instead of /spring/home or /home.html. I realize I can use UrlRewriteFilter, but it seems like I'd have to add entries for each Controller's URL to my urlrewrite.xml.

[spring-projects-issues]

Tom Duffey commented

For what it's worth, I finally just got back to this issue and solved it by extending ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping with my own isMultiActionControllerType() method. Mine has an extra check to see if the controller has the @Controller annotation but does NOT have any @RequestMapping annotations.

This is how must of the controllers in our application are setup (@Controller + ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping without @RequestMapping) and it seems to work OK.