SpringMVC Form Tag Lib Input + Textarea

For binding data on a jsp page to a form, one of the easiest ways is using spring form tag.

In this article, I will show you how to bind form data by using:

• <form:input> for a text box
  
• <form:textarea> for a text area
• <form:hidden> for a hidden field
  

1. Form Bean

First let have a look to bean

public class User {

 // a text box
 private String name;

 // textarea
 private String about;

 // hidden
 private String hidden;....
}

To store data of these tags, we need only the attribute with String type.

2. Form Tags

To create a form, we use this syntax:

<form:form action="/textbox/modifyUser" method="POST" commandName="user">

action="/textbox/modifyUser" means that this form submit data to action with request mapping is "modifyUser"
mothod="POST" means this form for posting data
commandName="user" means the form bean is named "user", the default is "command"

To generate a text box, we use this syntax:

<form:input path="name" /> 

This command will generate a text box with name and id is name

To generate a text area, we use this syntax:

<form:textarea path="about" cols="15" rows="4"/>

This command will generate a text area with name and id is about

To generate a hidden field, we use this syntax:

<form:hidden path="hidden"/>

This command will generate a hidden field with name and id is hidden

3. In Controller

@RequestMapping(value = "/modifyUser", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public ModelAndView modifyUser(@ModelAttribute("user") User user) {
 // do some thing here, e.g: update database, ...
 return new ModelAndView("viewUser", "user", user);
} 

Only one thing need to make attention is the annotation @ModelAttribute("user"), it means that the form bean is named "user"


References:

• http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/3.1.x/spring-framework-reference/html/view.html#view-jsp-formtaglib

Source code:

• For the demonstration, please download source code from HERE
• My repository on Github, download ALL SOURCE code in this blog