Spring SimpleFormController - Including Search Form In Success View

Question

UPDATE 1/31/10: Since this thread continues to get a lot of views...I am curious if it has been of help to anyone recently? Feel free to leave comments/feedback, thanks.

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I have a Spring form where I would like to reuse the search page to include the results under the search form. Currently when I do this I get the following error on loading the success view:

java.lang.IllegalStateException: Neither BindingResult nor plain target object for bean name 'searchAccounts' available as request attribute

Here is my bean configuration:

<bean name="/search.html" class="myapp.web.AccountSearchController">
        <property name="sessionForm" value="true"/>
    <property name="commandName" value="searchAccounts"/>
    <property name="commandClass" value="myapp.service.AccountSearch"/>
    <property name="validator">
        <bean class="myapp.service.AccountSearchValidator"/>
    </property>
    <property name="formView" value="accountSearch"/>
    <property name="successView" value="accountSearchResults"/>
</bean>

Here is the snippet of JSP that includes the search form:

<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>
<%@ taglib prefix="spring" uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags" %>
<%@ taglib prefix="form" uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags/form" %>

<form:form method="post" commandName="searchAccounts">

<table valign="top" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="500" border="0">

    <tr>
        <td valign="top">

        <div class="border-title">Account Search</div>

        <div id="navhome">
        <div class="border">
        <div id="sidebarhome">


        <table id="form">
            <tr>
                <td colspan="2">Search by Account ID or Domain Name. If
                values are provided for both, only accounts matching both values
                will be returned.</td>
            </tr>

            <tr>
                <td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td>
            </tr>

            <tr>
                <td align="right" valign="top"><form:label path="accountId">Account ID</form:label>:</td>
                <td><form:input path="accountId" size="30"/></td>
            </tr>
            <c:set var="accountIdErrors"><form:errors path="accountId"/></c:set>
            <c:if test="${not empty accountIdErrors}">
            <tr>
                 <td>&nbsp;</td>
                 <td>${accountIdErrors}</td>
            </tr>
            </c:if>
            <tr>
                <td align="right" valign="top"><form:label path="domainName">Domain Name</form:label>:</td>
                <td><form:input path="domainName" size="30"/></td>
            </tr>
            <c:set var="domainNameErrors"><form:errors path="domainName"/></c:set>
            <c:if test="${not empty domainNameErrors}">
            <tr>
                 <td>&nbsp;</td>
                 <td>${domainNameErrors}</td>
            </tr>
            </c:if>
            <tr>
                <td colspan="2">&nbsp;</td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td>&nbsp;</td>
                <td><input type="submit" name="submit" value="Search">
                </td>
            </tr>
        </table>

        </div>
        </div>
        </div>

        </td>
    </tr>
</table>
</form:form>

And...here is my form controller class (less the imports):

    public class AccountSearchController  extends SimpleFormController {

    protected final Log logger = LogFactory.getLog(getClass());

    public ModelAndView onSubmit(Object command, BindException errors) throws ServletException {
        String accountId = ((AccountSearch) command).getAccountId();
        String domainName = ((AccountSearch) command).getDomainName();

        logger.info("User provided search criteria...\n\tDomain Name: " + domainName + "\n\tAccountId: " + accountId);

        //TODO do search

        logger.info("returning from AccountSearch form view to " + getSuccessView());

        return new ModelAndView(getSuccessView());
    }

    protected Object formBackingObject(HttpServletRequest request) throws ServletException {
        AccountSearch accountSearch = new AccountSearch();
        return accountSearch;
    }
}

Thanks in advance for your help!

-aj

UPDATE:

I ported this to an annotated controller per answer below. Here is the new/working code:

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/search.html")
public class AccountSearchController {

    // note: this method does not have to be called setupForm
    @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public String setupForm(Model model) {
        AccountSearchCriteria accountSearchCriteria = new AccountSearchCriteria();
        model.addAttribute("accountSearchCriteria", accountSearchCriteria);
        model.addAttribute("title", "Account Search");
        return "accountSearch";
    }

    // note: this method does not have to be called onSubmit
    @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST)
    public String onSubmit(@ModelAttribute("accountSearchCriteria") AccountSearchCriteria accountSearchCriteria, BindingResult result, SessionStatus status, Model model) {
        new AccountSearchValidator().validate(accountSearchCriteria, result);
        if (result.hasErrors()) {
            return "accountSearch";

        } else {
            ArrayList<AccountSearchCriteria> accountSearchResults = new ArrayList<AccountSearchCriteria>();

            AccountSearchCriteria rec = new AccountSearchCriteria();
            rec.setDomainName("ajcoon.com");
            accountSearchResults.add(rec);

            AccountSearchCriteria rec2 = new AccountSearchCriteria();
            rec2.setDomainName("ajcoon2.com");
            accountSearchResults.add(rec2);

            //TODO do search
            //ArrayList<HashMap<String,String>> accountSearchResults = new AccountSearchService().search(accountId,domainName);

            if( accountSearchResults.size() < 1 ){
                result.rejectValue("domainName", "error.accountSearch.noMatchesFound", "No matching records were found.");
                return "accountSearch";

            } else if(accountSearchResults.size() > 1){
                model.addAttribute("accountSearchResults", accountSearchResults);
                return "accountSearch";

            } else {
                status.setComplete();
                return "redirect:viewAccount?accountId=";
                //return "redirect:viewAccount?accountId=" + accountSearchResults.get(0).getAccountId();
            }
        }
    }   
}

Solution

try to use (throws Exception instead of ..)

protected Object formBackingObject(HttpServletRequest request)
                            throws Exception {
        AccountSearch accountSearch = new AccountSearch();
        System.out.println("inside formBackingObject");
        return accountSearch;
}

It looks like your formBackingObject Method is not executed. rerun the code with the above change and see log console to see if the method is executed.

--

You should be using annotation instead of extending controller. Spring 3.0 will deprecate the controller hierarchy.