Spring MVC Fast Tutorial: Form Validation

What are we going to build?

User input validation for the new car form.

Validator

This Validator class will validate a Car: 'WEB-INF/src/springmvc/validator/CarValidator.java'

package springmvc.validator;
 
import org.springframework.validation.Errors;
import org.springframework.validation.ValidationUtils;
import org.springframework.validation.Validator;
 
import springmvc.model.Car;
 
public class CarValidator implements Validator {
 
	public boolean supports(Class aClass) {
		return Car.class.equals(aClass);
	}
 
	public void validate(Object obj, Errors errors) {
		Car car = (Car) obj;
 
		ValidationUtils.rejectIfEmptyOrWhitespace(errors, "model", "field.required", "Required field");
 
		ValidationUtils.rejectIfEmptyOrWhitespace(errors, "price", "field.required", "Required field");
		if ( ! errors.hasFieldErrors("price")) {
			if (car.getPrice().intValue() == 0)
				errors.rejectValue("price", "not_zero", "Can't be free!");
		}		
	}
}

supports(): declare classes supported by this validator
To add an error these parameters are needed:
- Car field name
- error message key
- default message if no message is not found for the key

View

Let's update the view 'jsp/carNew.jsp':

<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>
<%@ taglib prefix="form" uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags/form" %>
 
<html>
 
<head>
  <title>New Sponsor</title>
  <style>
    .error {
    	color: red;
    }
  </style>  
</head>
 
<body>
	<h1>New Car</h1>
 
	<form:form method="post">
 
		Brand<br />
		<form:select path="brand">
		   <form:options items="${brandList}" itemLabel="name" itemValue="id" />
		</form:select>
		<br /><br />
 
		Model <form:errors path="model" cssClass="error"/><br />
		<form:input path="model"/><br /><br />
 
		Price <form:errors path="price" cssClass="error"/><br />
		<form:input path="price"/><br /><br />
 
		<input type="submit" value="Submit">
 
	</form:form>
</body>
</html>

Configuration

We now declare the validator for the URL addCar.html in 'WEB-INF/springmvc-servlet.xml'

    <bean name="/new_car.html" class="springmvc.web.CarNewController">
        <property name="commandClass" value="springmvc.model.Car"/>
        <property name="formView" value="carNew"/>
        <property name="successView" value="list_cars.html"/>
		<property name="validator">
        	<bean class="springmvc.validator.CarValidator"/>
        </property>
    </bean>

Result

Build (ant) and relaunch Tomcat: http://localhost:8180/springmvc/new_car.html

We can check it's working by entering empty values:

Previous: Form Processing --- Up: Spring Fast Tutorial --- Next: Dependency Injection

Feedback

this is very good way to learn Spring but please can you do this tutorials with Net beans or Eclipse? this will be a great job thank you

Mahmou Morsi
July 23, 2008
#1

You can clearly see from the screen shots in earlier sections of the tutorial that Jérôme is using Eclipse. However I think he is doing a good job of hiding it as tutorials should be generic as possible. Not everybody uses NetBeans or Eclipse.

July 24, 2008
#2

Could you please describe what supports method do ?

sain
August 28, 2008
#3

great tutorial... kudos to u..

Goodguy
September 29, 2008
#4

thnks 4 the great tutorial!!!

ariesrana
October 1, 2008
#5

Because of you, I love Spring now!

Dmitry Bahtiarov
October 10, 2008
#6

Thanks for good tutorial.

Mr.A
October 12, 2008
#7

Why don't use use spring:bind tag?

Mr.A
October 12, 2008
#8

that was simply superb

Balaji Srikanth
November 25, 2008
#9

Exactly what I was looking for!

December 26, 2008
#10

Dubakoor material

johnson
February 17, 2009
#11

No downloads for this one?

saket jha
April 6, 2009
#12

This is excellent one ,but no download..

sanu
April 13, 2009
#13

it really good site from spring beginner . but when i am using <form:form></form:form> in my jsp. i am getting no such method error. any one can help me

sumadha
April 24, 2009
#14

best tutorial for beginning with spring, that i ever seen:)

y0y0
May 4, 2009
#15

Good Tutorial..

Bals
May 12, 2009
#16

Excellent Tutorial. Simple, yet covers most of the spring functionality.

Satish
May 26, 2009
#17

Spring bind tag is old when compared to the <form:tag> and the error messages are not displayed after validation when spring tag is used.

gomsz
June 4, 2009
#18

Its really superb tutorial for starting spring. Thanks a lot..

Avi
June 7, 2009
#19

Excellent!!! easy and funtional, very good, thanks!!!!

June 12, 2009
#20

Awsome, simple and clean, thanks very much!!!

tommmy
June 15, 2009
#21

Outstanding example for validation that i never ever seen this type of easiest understanding example thanks a lot for the people who introduced this example

VUMMADI MANOHAR REDDY
June 30, 2009
#22

thanks a lot for the example... really help ful :D but i have a little doubt.. wil this validation work in a ftl? in my case it didn't :(

farhath
July 3, 2009
#23

Lucid

:-)
July 9, 2009
#24

excellent tutorial

jaks
July 20, 2009
#25

yeah tutorial to mast hai !!!!

jasminder bhomra (jassi)
July 20, 2009
#26

It's simple excellent.The way you have presented the topic is superb.

July 31, 2009
#27

good one

sg
August 11, 2009
#28

Thanks again - very handy!

PUK
September 10, 2009
#29

This is most appropriate starters tutorial i have come across on the net for any technology. Thanks a lot Jérôme

Ajay
September 11, 2009
#30

Great tutorial. Much appreciated!!!

yupi
September 14, 2009
#31

Hi, if somebody types string in the field, you will receive exception (

pete
September 16, 2009
#32

Somebody knows how to handle the Exception if you put a String in the Price Field? the exceptions is shown in the <form:errors :(

aamc
October 15, 2009
#33

what happends if I put "rrrr" in price Value?? how can i get a custom message for this error??

aamc2
October 15, 2009
#34

Hi, i've solve the problem: you have to create a messages.properties file with: typeMismatch=invalid field typeMismatch.int=This value have to be integer typeMismatch.java.lang.Integer={0} have to be Integer. typeMismatch.java.util.Date={0} have to be Date, use format MM/dd/yyyy. and then map this in your application-context.xml with: messages That's all

aamc2
October 18, 2009
#35

I find framework in PHP...and fell in love with CodeIgnitor. I find framework in Java.. and fell in love with Spring. Thanks dude...

MSHW
October 25, 2009
#36

Great Tutorial. Quite Easy to understand and learn Spring. Many Thanks for your help in letting me grasp spring fundamentals in such a short time.

Praveen
November 10, 2009
#37

Really fantastic tutorial

rahul jain
December 22, 2009
#38

Is there a way to remove the added errors from the Errors object

kishore
December 28, 2009
#39

Hi, I'm adding all the field validation errors as follows errors.rejectValue(fieldName, errorCode) once i add the error based on some logic i want to remove the corresponding error from the 'errors'. How can i remove an added error from the errors object. I searched and not found any remove method on errors to remove the same. Can any one please help on this.

kishore
December 28, 2009
#40

nice tutorial. I liked it very much.

Ove
December 29, 2009
#41

Excellent Tutorial. Thank you

Venkata Madana
December 31, 2009
#42

Good stuff!

Anders Thøgersen
January 19, 2010
#43

Nice tutorial

siva
January 21, 2010
#44

xml is not valid. tag is not closed. Is it supposed to contain tag ?

Mircea
January 22, 2010
#45

Damn filterring.. I was talking about tag: lt property name eq "validator"

January 22, 2010
#46

Why is it new_car.html when the created page is jsp i.e.,carNew.jsp (http://localhost:8180/springmvc/new_car.html)

Deepa Revankar
January 29, 2010
#47

Very good material for beginers

Bhabatosh
February 2, 2010
#48

very pleased, thanks and keep going

yousef - opensoft
February 3, 2010
#49

Great simple tutorial for spring that leaves out all the other complex frameworks(eclipse,netbeans,maven,ant) that only confuse when learning. Thanks!

Kelvin
February 4, 2010
#50