In the world of networked applications, thin clients (also known as web applications) are more in demand than thick clients. Due to this demand, every language is providing frameworks that try to make web-application development simpler. The simplicity is not provided just through setting up the basic application structure or generating boiler plate code. These frameworks are trying to provide simplicity through plug-ability of the frameworks i.e. the components of different frameworks could be brought together without much difficulty.

Among such frameworks, Spring Framework is one of the most used. With its support to multiple Data Access frameworks/libraries and light-weight IoC container makes it suitable for scenarios where one would like mix-and-match multiple frameworks, a different one for each layer. This aspect of Spring Framework becomes more suitable for development of web-applications where the UI does not need to know with which framework it is dealing for business process or data access. The component of the Spring Framework stack that caters to the web UI is Spring MVC. In this discussion, we will focus on the basics of Spring MVC. First section will deal with the terms and terminologies related with Spring MVC and MVC. The second section will detail the steps for developing components of a web-application using Spring MVC. That is the agenda for this discussion.

Spring MVC

Spring MVC, as the name suggests, is a framework based on Model (M), View (V), Controller (C) pattern. Currently there are more than seven well known web-application frameworks that implement MVC pattern. Then what are the features of Spring MVC that sets it apart from other frameworks? The two main features are:

1. Pluggable View technology
2. Injection of services into controllers

The former provides a way to use different UI frameworks instead of Spring MVC’s UI library and the latter removes the need to develop a new way to access functionality of business layer.

1. Pluggable View technology
   Various View technologies are available in the market (including Tiles, Velocity, etc) with which Spring MVC can quite easily be integrated. In other words, JSP is not the only template engine supported. The pluggable feature is not limited to the templating technologies. By using common configuration functionality, other frameworks such as JSF can be integrated with Spring MVC applications. Thus, it is possible to mix-and-match different View technologies by using Spring MVC.
2. Injection of Services into Controllers
   This feature comes into picture when the Spring Framework is used to implement the business layer. Using the IoC capabilities of Spring Framework, the business layer services and/or objects can be injected into the Controller without explicitly setting up the call to the service or mirroring the business layer objects in controller. This helps in reduction of code duplication between Web UI/process layer and business process layer.

The next important aspect of Spring MVC is its components. They are:

1. Model (M)
2. View (V)
3. Controller (C)

Model deals with the data that the application has to present, View contains the logic to present the data and Controller takes care of the flow of navigation and application logic. Following are the details.

1. Model
   Model is an object that holds the data to be displayed. It can be any Java object – from simple POJO to any type of Collection object. It can also be a combination of both – an instance of POJO to hold the detailed data and a collection object to hold all the instances of the POJO which, in reality, is most commonly used Model in Spring MVC. Also, the framework has its own way to hold the data. It holds the data using the Model object that is an instance of org.springframework.ui.ModelMap. Internally, whichever collection class object is used, the framework maps it to the ModelMap class.
2. View
   In MVC, it is the View that presents the data to the user. Spring MVC, just as many other JEE frameworks, uses a combination of JSP and tag libraries to implement View. Apart from using JSP, many kinds of View technologies like Tiles, Velocity, and Jasper Reports can be plugged into the Framework. The main class behind this plug ability is the org.springframework.web.servlet.View. The View class achieves the plug-in functionality by presenting the View as Logical View instead of actual/physical View. Physical view corresponds to the page developed using any of the templating technologies. The Logical View corresponds to the name of the View to be used. The name is then mapped to the actual View in the configuration file. One important point to remember about how Spring MVC uses Logical View is that Logical View and Model are treated as one entity named Model And View represented by org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView class.
3. Controller
   The flow of application and navigation is directed by the controller. It also processes the user input and transforms it into the Model. In Spring MVC, controllers are developed either by extending the out-of-the-box Controller classes or implementing the Controller interface. Following comes under the former category
   • SimpleFormController
   • AbstractController
   • AbstractCommandController
   • CancellableFormController
   • AbstractCommandController
   • MultiActionController
   • ParameterizableViewController
   • ServletForwardingController
   • ServletWrappingController
   • UrlFilenameViewController

   Of these most commonly used are AbstractController, AbstractCommandController, SimpleFormController and CancellableFormController.

That wraps up this section. Let us move onto the next section – steps for developing an application using Spring MVC.