Learn Spring Fast- Form Processing

By Barry Nirmal

In this step we shall create a form to add a new employee to the employee list.

We need a method in EmployeeManager to create a new employee.

Modify EmployeeManager class



public Employee  createEmployee (Employee  e) {
	Employee  emp  = new Employee ();
	emp.setId ((long) empList.size() + 1);
	emp.setJob (e.getJob ());
	emp.setName (e.getName ());
 
	empList.add(emp);
 
	return emp;
}

Create JobManager class


package springfast.service;
 
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
 
import springfast.model.Job;
 
public class JobManager {
 
	private static List jobList;
 
	static {
		Job job1 = new Job();
		job1.setId((long)1);
		job1.setTitle ("Programmer");
		job1.setSalary ( new Long("10000"));		
 
		Job job2 = new Job();
		job2.setId((long)2);
		job2.setTitle ("Manager");
		job2.setSalary ( new Long ( "50000" ) ) ;		
 
		jobList = new ArrayList();
		jobList.add(job1);
		jobList.add(job2);		
	}
 
	public List getJobList() {
		return jobList;
	}	
 
	public Job  getJobById (Long id) {
		for (Job j : jobList) {
			if (j.getId().equals(id))
				return j;
		}
		return null;
	}
}

Create Controller

In 'WEB-INF/springfast-servlet.xml', we must declare a new URL and its Controller:


quot;springfast.web.NewEmployeeController">
    <property name="commandClass" value="sprinfast.model.Employee"/>
    <property name="formView" value="newEmployee"/>
    <property name="successView" value="list_employees.html"/>
</bean>

We must now create this Controller: 'WEB-INF/src/springmvc/web/NewEmployeeController.java':



package springfast.web;
 
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;
 
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
 
import org.springframework.web.bind.ServletRequestDataBinder;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.SimpleFormController;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.view.RedirectView;
 
import springmvc.model.Job;
import springmvc.model.Employee;
import springmvc.service.JobManager;
import springmvc.service.EmployeeManager;
 

public class NewEmployeeController extends SimpleFormController {
 
    @Override
    protected Object formBackingObject(HttpServletRequest request) throws Exception {
    	Employee defaultEmployee = new Employee();
    	defaultEmployee.setName ("new employee name");
    	return defaultEmployee;
    }
 
    @Override
    protected Map referenceData(HttpServletRequest request) throws Exception {
    	Map dataMap = new HashMap();
    	JobManager jobManager = new JobManager();
    	dataMap.put("jobList", jobManager.getJobList());
    	return dataMap;
    }
 
    @Override
    protected void initBinder(HttpServletRequest request, ServletRequestDataBinder binder) throws Exception {
    	binder.setDisallowedFields(new String[] {"job"});
 
    	Employee employee = (Employee)binder.getTarget();
 
    	// set employee's job from request parameter job id
    	JobManager jobManager = new JobManager();    	
    	Long jobId = null;
    	try {
	    	jobId = Long.parseLong(request.getParameter("job"));
		} catch (Exception e) {}		
		if (jobId != null) {
			Job job = jobManager.getJobById(jobId);
			employee.setJob (job);
		}    
    }
 
    @Override
    public ModelAndView onSubmit(Object command) throws ServletException {
    	EmployeeManager empManager = new EmployeeManager();
    	empManager.createEmployee ((Employee)command);
 
    	return new ModelAndView(new RedirectView(getSuccessView()));
    }
 
}

Create View

Let's now create the view 'jsp/newEmployee.jsp':

 
<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>
<%@ taglib prefix="form" uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags/form" %>
 
<html>
<body>
	<h1>New Employee</h1>
 
	<form:form method="post">
 
		Job<br />
		<form:select path="job">
		   <form:options items="${jobList}" itemLabel="name" itemValue="id" />
		</form:select>
		<br /><br />
 
		Name <br />
		<form:input path="name"/><br /><br />
 
 
		<input type="submit" value="Submit">
 
	</form:form>
</body>
</html>

Build and Test

Build (ant), relaunch Tomcat and check it's working:

http://localhost:8080/springfast/new_employee.html

You will see the following result:

This proves that our MVC application works like a charm. We can now relax and have a cup of coffee, or tea but no alcohol please.

Click here to download the "springfast" folder that the author created and tested.

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