Spring MVC without Controller

By Arvind Rai, June 25, 2019

On this page we will provide Spring MVC without controller using ViewControllerRegistry with addViewController(), addRedirectViewController() and addStatusController() example. In case when there is no custom controller logic, we can use addViewControllers() method in our JavaConfig that will map URLs to views and hence there is no need to create actual controller class. We need to pre-define URLs and their mapping views with HTTP status code using ViewControllerRegistry class within addViewControllers() method in our JavaConfig. We can configure URL redirect here. We can also configure a URL that will return only pre-defined HTTP status code in header without rendering body. We can achieve all these functionality in XML configuration too and we will provide here in our example. Find the complete example step by step.

Spring MVC with WebMvcConfigurerAdapter.addViewControllers() without Controller Class

We can write spring MVC without using controller class. We need to override addViewControllers() from WebMvcConfigurerAdapter in our JavaConfig. addViewControllers() configures automated controllers with pre-defined view name and status code. We can map a URL with a view, a URL with another URL to redirect, a URL that responds only pre-defined status code using addViewControllers().

ViewControllerRegistry

ViewControllerRegistry registers view controller. We need not to create actual controller class when using ViewControllerRegistry. It is used when we just need to map a URL with a view.
addViewController(String urlPath): It adds a view controller for the given URL. This method returns ViewControllerRegistration and using ViewControllerRegistration.setViewName() a corresponding view is mapped.
addRedirectViewController(String urlPath, String redirectUrl): It maps a URL to another URL to redirect on it. It has been introduced in spring 4.1.
addStatusController(String urlPath, HttpStatus statusCode): It maps a URL with given status code. It has also been introduced in spring 4.1.

Software Used

Find the software used in our demo.
1. Java 8
2. Spring 4.2.5.RELEASE
3. Tomcat 8
4. Gradle
5. Eclipse

Project Structure in Eclipse

Find the print screen of project structure in eclipse.

Spring 4 MVC without Controller using ViewControllerRegistry with addViewController(), addRedirectViewController() and addStatusController() Example

Gradle to Build Project

Find the gradle file to build the project.
build.gradle

apply plugin: 'java'
apply plugin: 'eclipse'
apply plugin: 'war'
archivesBaseName = 'spring4mvc'
version = '1' 
repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}
dependencies {
	compile 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web:1.3.3.RELEASE'
        providedRuntime 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-tomcat:1.3.3.RELEASE'    
}

Create Views

Find the views used in our example.
myhome.jsp

<html>
<head><title>Home Page</title></head>
<body>
   <h3> Home Page </h3>
</body>
</html>

helloworld.jsp

<html>
<head><title>Hello World!</title></head>
<body>
   <h3>Hello World!</h3>
</body>
</html>

Create JavaConfig and XML configuration for View Controller

Find the JavaConfig for addViewControllers().
MVCConfig.java

package com.concretepage;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.http.HttpStatus;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.EnableWebMvc;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.ViewControllerRegistry;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.WebMvcConfigurerAdapter;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver;
@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class MVCConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {
    @Bean  
    public InternalResourceViewResolver viewResolver() {  
	InternalResourceViewResolver resolver = new InternalResourceViewResolver();  
        resolver.setPrefix("/WEB-INF/pages/");  
        resolver.setSuffix(".jsp");
        return resolver;  
    }
    @Override
    public void addViewControllers(ViewControllerRegistry registry) {
        registry.addViewController("/home").setViewName("myhome");
        registry.addViewController("/hello").setViewName("helloworld");
        registry.addRedirectViewController("/home", "/hello");
        registry.addStatusController("/detail", HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST);        
    }    
}

We observe the following points here.
1. When we access URL /hello then helloworld.jsp will run.
2. When we access URL /home then helloworld.jsp will run because it will be redirected to the URL /hello.
3. When we access URL /detail then we will get header response with 400 HTTP status code.

The equivalent XML configuration is given below.
dispatcher-servlet.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc.xsd">

    <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
	  <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/pages/"/>
	  <property name="suffix" value=".jsp"/> 
    </bean>        
    <mvc:view-controller path="/home" view-name="myhome" />
    <mvc:view-controller path="/hello" view-name="helloworld"/>
    <mvc:redirect-view-controller path="/home" redirect-url="/hello"/>
    <mvc:status-controller status-code="400" path="/detail"/>
</beans>

Web Application Initializer

Find the web application initializer to run example using JavaConfig.

package com.concretepage;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.support.AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer;
public class WebAppInitializer extends AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer {
	@Override
	protected Class<?>[] getRootConfigClasses() {
		return new Class[] { MVCConfig.class };
	}
	@Override
	protected Class<?>[] getServletConfigClasses() {
		return null;
	}
	@Override
	protected String[] getServletMappings() {
		return new String[] { "/" };
	}
}