Spring 3.1 MVC - Form handling workflow best practice

Question

At the moment I am trying to get to know the correct workflow for form submission/validation/error handling in Spring MVC 3.1. No I got some questions.

What is the correct way of preserving the form errors, bound model through a redirect (is there a built in way - I haven't found one)
I know that I can use the Spring form tags and JSR 303 to validate (including i18n messages) submitted form values. But what is the correct way of handling errors that happen while processing the given values? (e.g. registration is not possible - email already registered) From Struts or non java Frameworks I know something like ActionErrors. What is the correct way of doing it in Spring MVC?
What is the correct way of iterating through the form errors available via the "form:errors" tag? I just want to show a list of errors.

Jose Luis Martin · Answer 1 · 2012-02-16T22:06:41.463

4

From reference documentation:

1.) Use FlashMap attributes from RequestContextUtils.

2.) When using the MVC namespace a JSR-303 validator is configured automatically assuming a JSR-303 implementation is available on the classpath.Any ConstraintViolations will automatically be exposed as errors in the BindingResult renderable by standard Spring MVC form tags.

3.use path="*" to list all errors

<form:form>
      <form:errors path="*" cssClass="errorBox" />
      <table>
          <tr>
              <td>First Name:</td>
              <td><form:input path="firstName" /></td>
              <td><form:errors path="firstName" /></td>
          </tr>
          <tr>
              <td>Last Name:</td>
              <td><form:input path="lastName" /></td>
              <td><form:errors path="lastName"  /></td>
          </tr>
          <tr>
              <td colspan="3">
                  <input type="submit" value="Save Changes" />
              </td>
          </tr>
      </table>
  </form:form>

edited Feb 16 '12 at 22:06

answered Feb 16 '12 at 16:07

Jose Luis Martin

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1.) Thank you very much that helps me. 2.) That is correct for all JSR 303 validations but what about something that is behind the model validation. For example a failed request to a Web API. What is the correct way of exposing these errors to the view? (without some custom made error model that I hand back to the view) 3.) That is correct but there is no way to customize the output of form:errors. I'd like to have some ul li li li ul construction for the errors. – denis Feb 17 '12 at 06:35
2) Use a HandlerExceptionResolver for RequestBodyNotValidException. 3) use BindErrorTag (spring:hasBindErrors) that expose Errors under "errors" variable and iterate on ${errors.allErros} – Jose Luis Martin Feb 17 '12 at 11:00

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:27

1) In Spring 3.1 you can use RedirectAttributes. They were designed specifically for Post/Redirect/Get screnario. You can see a great example here: Spring - Redirect after POST (even with validation errors)

2) I think JSR-303 validators were meant to be simple, self-reliant, and independent from each other. While it may be possible to write them in such a way that they access other persistence entities, etc - it is not a best practice. I personally check for duplicate emails in the controller. If the email already exists - I add a new FieldError to the BindingResult.

Spring 3.1 MVC - Form handling workflow best practice

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