Bootstrapping a Spring Web MVC application programmatically

Since Spring framework 3.1+, developers are able to implement a 100% code-based approach for bootstrapping a Spring Web MVC application, without any XML configuration. This tutorial is going to explore how we can achieve that to build a completely XML-free sample Spring Web MVC application.

Usually we create a Spring’s application context file (e.g.  applicationContext.xml ) which configures beans definitions such as view resolver beans, controller beans, DAO beans, application-specific beans, etc. And then we declare Spring’s dispatcher servlet in the web deployment descriptor file ( web.xml ) in order to route all requests through the Spring Web MVC container. For example, following is a typical configuration for bootstrap the Spring’s dispatcher servlet in the  web.xml file:

XML-based approach:

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<? xml version = "1.0" encoding = "UTF-8" ?>
< web-app xmlns:xsi = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
     xmlns = "http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
     xmlns:web = "http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd"
     xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
         http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
     id = "WebApp_ID" version = "3.0" >
     
     < display-name >SpringWebMVCApp</ display-name >
 
     < servlet >
         < servlet-name >SpringController</ servlet-name >
         < servlet-class >org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</ servlet-class >
         < init-param >
             < param-name >contextConfigLocation</ param-name >
             < param-value >/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml</ param-value >
         </ init-param >
         < load-on-startup >1</ load-on-startup >
     </ servlet >
 
     < servlet-mapping >
         < servlet-name >SpringController</ servlet-name >
         < url-pattern >/</ url-pattern >
     </ servlet-mapping >
 
</ web-app >
Since Servlet 3.0+, the above registration for Spring’s dispatcher servlet can be done programmatically (code-based), thanks to the Servlet 3.0’s new feature called shared libraries/runtimes pluggability which scans jar files bundled in the  WEB-INF\lib directory for implementations of the  ServletContainerInitializer  interface and invokes its  onStartup()  method which contains initialization/bootstrapping code, during servlet container/web application startup. In respond to this new feature, Spring 3.1+ provides its own implementation by the  SpringServletContainerInitializer  class which is bundled in configured in the  spring-web-VERSION.jar  file.

The  SpringServletContainerInitializer  class is bootstrapped automatically by any Servlet 3.0-compliant container (e.g. Apache Tomcat 7), and it will look for an implementation of the  WebApplicationInitializer  interface and invoke its onStartup()  method. Following is an example of a  WebApplicationInitializer ’s implementation that does the same thing as the XML-based approach above:

Code-based approach:

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import javax.servlet.ServletContext;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.ServletRegistration;
 
import org.springframework.web.WebApplicationInitializer;
import org.springframework.web.context.support.XmlWebApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet;
 
public class SpringWebAppInitializer  implements WebApplicationInitializer {
 
     @Override
     public void onStartup(ServletContext container)  throws ServletException {
         XmlWebApplicationContext appContext =  new XmlWebApplicationContext();
         appContext.setConfigLocation( "/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml" );
         
         ServletRegistration.Dynamic dispatcher = container.addServlet(
                 "SpringDispatcher" new DispatcherServlet(appContext));
         dispatcher.setLoadOnStartup( 1 );
         dispatcher.addMapping( "/" );
     }
 
}
However, as we can see, the Spring’s application context configuration still remains XML-based:

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appContext.setConfigLocation( "/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml" );
We may configure the  applicationContext.xml  file as follows:

XML-based application context configuration:

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< beans xmlns = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
     xmlns:xsi = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
     xmlns:context = "http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
     xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
     http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
     http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
     http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd">
 
     < bean name = "/" class = "net.codejava.spring.HomeController" />
     
     < bean id = "viewResolver"
         class = "org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver" >
         < property name = "prefix" value = "/" />
         < property name = "suffix" value = ".jsp" />
     </ bean >
</ beans >
So to replace this XML by a code-based approach, we can create a configuration class using Spring’s  @Configuration  and @Bean  annotations and register this configuration class by the  AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext  class.

 

Here’s an example of a replacement for the  applicationContext.xml  above in Java code as follows:

Code-based application context configuration:

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package net.codejava.spring;
 
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver;
 
@Configuration
public class ApplicationContextConfig {
     
     @Bean (name =  "viewResolver" )
     public InternalResourceViewResolver getViewResolver() {
         InternalResourceViewResolver viewResolver =  new InternalResourceViewResolver();
         viewResolver.setPrefix( "/" );
         viewResolver.setSuffix( ".jsp" );
         return viewResolver;
     }
     
     @Bean (name =  "/" )
     public Controller getHomeController() {
         return new HomeController();
     }
}
This configuration defines two beans, one for a typical Spring MVC’s view resolver and one for a controller. Code of the HomeController  class is as follows:

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package net.codejava.spring;
 
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
 
import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.Controller;
 
public class HomeController  implements Controller {
 
     @Override
     public ModelAndView handleRequest(HttpServletRequest request,
             HttpServletResponse response)  throws Exception {
         
         return new ModelAndView( "home" );
     }
 
}
The  handleRequest()  method of this controller class simply returns a logical view name “home” which is mapped to the following  home.jsp  page:

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<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8"
     pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
     "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
< html >
< head >
< meta http-equiv = "Content-Type" content = "text/html; charset=UTF-8" >
< title >Spring MVC Bootstrap</ title >
</ head >
< body >
     < div align = "center" >
         < h1 >Welcome to Spring MVC Bootstrap demo!</ h1 >
         < h3 >100% code-based approach, no XML at all!</ h3 >
     </ div >
</ body >
</ html >
And register this configuration file using the  AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext  class as follows:

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AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext appContext =  new AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext();
appContext.register(ApplicationContextConfig. class );

Then we have our  SpringWebAppInitializer  class finalized as follows:

100% code-based approach:

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package net.codejava.spring;
 
import javax.servlet.ServletContext;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.ServletRegistration;
 
import org.springframework.web.WebApplicationInitializer;
import org.springframework.web.context.support.AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet;
 
public class SpringWebAppInitializer  implements WebApplicationInitializer {
 
     @Override
     public void onStartup(ServletContext container)  throws ServletException {
 
         AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext appContext =  new AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext();
         appContext.register(ApplicationContextConfig. class );
 
         ServletRegistration.Dynamic dispatcher = container.addServlet(
                 "SpringDispatcher" new DispatcherServlet(appContext));
         dispatcher.setLoadOnStartup( 1 );
         dispatcher.addMapping( "/" );
     }
 
}
If we build this application in Eclipse IDE, we would have the following project structure:

SpringMVCBootstrap project structure

Package and deploy this application on a Servlet 3.0-compliant server (Apache Tomcat) and access it in browser by the following URL:

http://localhost:8080/SpringMVCBootstrap

Output:

SpringMVCBootstrap output

As we can see, this simple Spring Web MVC application is running perfectly! Thanks to the code-based approach, we don’t have to write any XML code at all! One big benefit of this approach is that we can package our application’s bootstrap code in a jar file and put it under  WEB-INF\lib  directory and the servlet container will automatically detect and initialize it.

Download the sample application (Eclipse project) to test this out yourself.
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