Spring MVC - Multi Action Controller Example

The following example show how to use Multi Action Controller using Spring Web MVC framework. MultiActionController class helps to map multiple URLs with their methods in a single controller respectively.

package com.tutorialspoint;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.multiaction.MultiActionController;

public class UserController extends MultiActionController{
 
   public ModelAndView home(HttpServletRequest request,
      HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
      ModelAndView model = new ModelAndView("home");
      model.addObject("message", "Home");
      return model;
   }

   public ModelAndView add(HttpServletRequest request,
      HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
      ModelAndView model = new ModelAndView("user");
      model.addObject("message", "Add");
      return model;
   }

   public ModelAndView remove(HttpServletRequest request,
      HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
      ModelAndView model = new ModelAndView("user");
      model.addObject("message", "Remove");
      return model;
   }
}

   <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping"/>
   <bean name="/home.htm" class="com.tutorialspoint.UserController" /> 
   <bean name="/user/*.htm" class="com.tutorialspoint.UserController" /> 

For example, using above configuration, if URI

1. /home.htm is requested, DispatcherServlet will forward the request to the UserController home() method.
2. user/add.htm is requested, DispatcherServlet will forward the request to the UserController add() method.
3. user/remove.htm is requested, DispatcherServlet will forward the request to the UserController remove() method.

To start with it, let us have working Eclipse IDE in place and follow the following steps to develop a Dynamic Form based Web Application using Spring Web Framework:

Step	Description
1	Create a project with a name TestWeb under a package com.tutorialspoint as explained in the Spring MVC - Hello World Example chapter.
2	Create a Java classes UserController under the com.tutorialspoint package.
3	Create a view files home.jsp, user.jsp under jsp sub-folder.
4	The final step is to create the content of all the source and configuration files and export the application as explained below.

UserController.java

package com.tutorialspoint;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.multiaction.MultiActionController;

public class UserController extends MultiActionController{
 
   public ModelAndView home(HttpServletRequest request,
      HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
      ModelAndView model = new ModelAndView("home");
      model.addObject("message", "Home");
      return model;
   }

   public ModelAndView add(HttpServletRequest request,
      HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
      ModelAndView model = new ModelAndView("user");
      model.addObject("message", "Add");
      return model;
   }

   public ModelAndView remove(HttpServletRequest request,
      HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
      ModelAndView model = new ModelAndView("user");
      model.addObject("message", "Remove");
      return model;
   }
}

TestWeb-servlet.xml

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
   xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xsi:schemaLocation="
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans     
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/context 
   http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd">

   <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
      <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/"/>
      <property name="suffix" value=".jsp"/>
   </bean>

   <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping"/>
   <bean name="/home.htm" 
      class="com.tutorialspoint.UserController" /> 
   <bean name="/user/*.htm" 
      class="com.tutorialspoint.UserController" />    
</beans>

home.jsp

<%@ page contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" %>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<title>Home</title>
</head>
<body>
<body>
<a href="user/add.htm" >Add</a> <br>
<a href="user/remove.htm" >Remove</a>
</body>
</html>

user.jsp

<%@ page contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" %>
<html>
<head>
<title>Hello World</title>
</head>
<body>
   <h2>${message}</h2>  
</body>
</html>

Once you are done with creating source and configuration files, export your application. Right click on your application and use Export > WAR File option and save your TestWeb.war file in Tomcat's webapps folder.
Now start your Tomcat server and make sure you are able to access other web pages from webapps folder using a standard browser. Now try a URL http://localhost:8080/TestWeb/home.htm and you should see the following result if everything is fine with your Spring Web Application:
Try a URL http://localhost:8080/TestWeb/user/add.htm and you should see the following result if everything is fine with your Spring Web Application: