I'm new to java and web apps and after trying out a few things I went with a set up of Spring webmvc using annotations and velocity as templating engine. It's not that hard to do simple @RequestMapping annotations to controller methods and returning ModelAndView instances filled with data, however I was wondering how things are done when you have data you need in the model that occurs on every page, for example "latest 5 news items" or something similar. You could of course always fill the model with such data in every method that is handled by a @RequestMapping, but I'm quite sure that that is not the way to do it.
What is the correct way of filling the model with recurring data, without poluting your controller methods with calls to the same method for this recurring data.
Any help is appreciated.