Form submit portlet with Spring MVC

Question

I'm trying to achieve a Liferay portlet of submit form using spring MVC.

The model:

package com.model;

public class Person {
    String firstName;
    String middleName;

    public String getFirstName()
    {
        return this.firstName;
    }

    public String getMiddleName()
    {
        return this.middleName;
    }

    public void setFirstName(String firstName)
    {
        this.firstName=firstName;
    }

    public void setMiddleName(String middleName)
    {
        this.middleName=middleName;
    }
}

The controller:

package com.controller;

import com.model.Person;

import javax.portlet.ActionRequest;
import javax.portlet.ActionResponse;
import javax.portlet.RenderRequest;
import javax.portlet.RenderResponse;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ModelAttribute;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;
import org.springframework.web.portlet.ModelAndView;
import org.springframework.web.portlet.bind.annotation.ActionMapping;
import org.springframework.web.portlet.bind.annotation.RenderMapping;

@Controller(value = "MyFirstSpringMVCPortlet")
@RequestMapping("VIEW")
public class MyFirstSpringMVCPortlet {

    @RenderMapping
    public ModelAndView handleRenderRequest() {
        ModelAndView modelAndView = new ModelAndView("welcome");
        modelAndView.addObject("person", new Person());
        modelAndView.addObject("msg", "Hello Spring MVC");
        return modelAndView; 
    }


    @ActionMapping(value = "handleSubmitPerson")
    public void submitPerson(
            @ModelAttribute("person") Person person,
            ActionRequest actionRequest, ActionResponse actionResponse,
            Model model) {
            System.out.println("FirstName= "+person.getFirstName());
            System.out.println("MiddleName= "+person.getMiddleName());
    }


}

View (welcome.jsp)

<%@taglib uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags/form" prefix="form"%>
<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/portlet_2_0" prefix="portlet" %>
<h1>${msg}</h1>
<portlet:defineObjects />
<portlet:actionURL var="submitFormURL" name="handleSubmitPerson"/>
<form:form name="person" method="post" modelAttribute="person" action="<%=submitFormURL.toString() %>">
<br/>
    <table style="margin-left:80px">
        <tbody>
            <tr>
                <td><form:label path="firstName">First Name</form:label></td>
                <td><form:input path="firstName"></form:input></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td><form:label path="middleName">Middle Name</form:label></td>
                <td><form:input path="middleName"></form:input></td>
            </tr>
            <tr>
                <td colspan="2"><input type="submit" value="Submit Form">
                </td>
            </tr>
        </tbody>
    </table>
</form:form>

I built the war with maven and then I deployed the war under apache tomcat of Liferay portal. Until this point everything is working fine without problems. But when I tried to run the portlet I got in the console an error. The following stacktrace describes it:

11:37:15,586 ERROR [RuntimePageImpl-26][render_portlet_jsp:132] null
java.lang.IllegalStateException: Neither BindingResult nor plain target object for bean name 'person' available as request attribute
    at org.apache.jsp.WEB_002dINF.jsp.welcome_jsp._jspx_meth_form_005flabel_005f0(welcome_jsp.java:238)
    at org.apache.jsp.WEB_002dINF.jsp.welcome_jsp._jspService(welcome_jsp.java:173)
    at org.apache.jasper.runtime.HttpJspBase.service(HttpJspBase.java:70)
    at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:728)
    at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServletWrapper.service(JspServletWrapper.java:432)
    at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.serviceJspFile(JspServlet.java:390)
    at org.apache.jasper.servlet.JspServlet.service(JspServlet.java:334)
    at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:728)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:305)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:210)
    at com.liferay.portal.kernel.servlet.filters.invoker.InvokerFilterChain.doFilter(InvokerFilterChain.java:116)
    at com.liferay.portal.kernel.servlet.filters.invoker.InvokerFilter.doFilter(InvokerFilter.java:96)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:243)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:210)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationDispatcher.invoke(ApplicationDispatcher.java:749)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationDispatcher.doInclude(ApplicationDispatcher.java:605)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationDispatcher.include(ApplicationDispatcher.java:544)
    at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:621)
    at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:728)
    at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:305)

It seems that I have something wrong in my controller. Can someone help me please to correct the problem?

Answer 1

Which version of Liferay you are using?

if it is > 6.2 GA1

Then in your liferay-portlet.xml file, please add this attribute and recompile and test again.

<requires-namespaced-parameters>false</requires-namespaced-parameters>

Liferay adds namespace to the request parameters by default. You need to disable it.

Answer 2

You are trying to obtain "person" model attribute in submitPerson method and you are trying to use "person" model attribute in your JSP. However, you didn't set that model attribute previously. So set your person model attribute first in like handleRenderRequest method:

ModelAndView modelAndView = new ModelAndView("welcome");
modelAndView.addObject("person", new Person());

Answer 3

Take a look to this example,maybe its helpful four you.

You have to use ModelAndView correctly.

Neither BindingResult nor plain target object for bean name available as request attribute

Answer 4

Form tag in JSP raises the exception, because there's no "person" attribute in the model. You have to include the instance of Person class in the model. There're several ways how to achieve it. Method annotated with @ModelAttribute annotation is probably the most convenient.

I suggest to add the following method to the controller:

@ModelAttribute("person")
public Person getPerson() {
    return new Person();
}

Or you can modify the render method (I also removed the unused parameters from the signature):

@RenderMapping
public ModelAndView handleRenderRequest() {
    ModelAndView modelAndView = new ModelAndView("welcome");
    modelAndView.addObject("person", new Person());
    modelAndView.addObject("msg", "Hello Spring MVC");
    return modelAndView; 
}

Answer 5

This is because you are binding "person" object in your jsp, but you are not passing anything for variable "person" from controller. And that's why render is unable to find that object in scope and throws an exception.

Add below line of code in your controller method and it'll work.

mv.addObject("person", new Person()) // Note : you must use same name in jsp page as defined in first argument