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Hey guys in this post, you will learn about populating the dropdown values from java model in Spring MVC with easy to understand example

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Read More:

• Check the Complete JSP Tutorials
• Check the Complete Spring Boot Tutorials [100+ Examples]
• Check the Complete Spring Boot and Thymeleaf Tutorial
• Check the Complete AWS Tutorial
• Check the Complete JavaServer Faces (JSF) Tutorial
• Check the Complete Spring Data JPA Tutorial
• Check the Complete Spring Security Tutorial
• Check the Javascript Projects for Beginners
• Check the Spring Boot JdbcTemplate Tutorials

Overview

• Spring MVC dropdowns are represented by <form:select>
• To read the options from Java object we will use <form:options />, it takes items as attribute which contains the java object property name

<form:select path="country">
 <form:options items="${employee.propertyName}" />
</form:select>

<spring:select> is the Spring MVC form tag. path attribute is used to bind the textbox value to the bean property using setter methods.

Complete Example

Lets create a step by step maven project to understand the Spring MVC

Create a maven project

First you need to create a maven webapp project. You can check the below post to create new maven webapp project –

• Create a maven webapp project

Add Maven Dependencies

Open pom.xml and add the following maven dependencies

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
	xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
	<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
	<groupId>in.bushansirgur</groupId>
	<artifactId>springmvc</artifactId>
	<packaging>war</packaging>
	<version>1.0.0</version>
	<name>springmvc Maven Webapp</name>
	<url>http://maven.apache.org</url>
	<properties>
		<maven.compiler.source>1.11</maven.compiler.source>
		<maven.compiler.target>1.11</maven.compiler.target>
		<spring.version>4.3.6.RELEASE</spring.version>
	</properties>
	<dependencies>
		<dependency>
			<groupId>junit</groupId>
			<artifactId>junit</artifactId>
			<version>3.8.1</version>
			<scope>test</scope>
		</dependency>
		<dependency>
			<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
			<artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
			<version>${spring.version}</version>
		</dependency>
		<dependency>
		    <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
		    <artifactId>jsp-api</artifactId>
		    <version>2.0</version>
		    <scope>provided</scope>
		</dependency>

	</dependencies>
	<build>
		<finalName>springmvc</finalName>
	</build>
</project>

Configure Spring MVC App

Create AppConfig.java class inside in.bushansirgur.springmvc.config package and add the following content

package in.bushansirgur.springmvc.config;

import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.ComponentScan;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.ViewResolver;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.config.annotation.EnableWebMvc;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver;

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "in.bushansirgur.springmvc")
public class AppConfig {
	
	//define the bean for view resolver
	@Bean
	public ViewResolver viewResolver() {
		InternalResourceViewResolver viewResolver = new InternalResourceViewResolver();
		viewResolver.setPrefix("/WEB-INF/view/");
		viewResolver.setSuffix(".jsp");
		return viewResolver;
	}
}

Configure Dispatcher Servlet

Create MySpringMvcDispatcherServletInitializer.java inside in.bushansirgur.springmvc.config package and add the following content

package in.bushansirgur.springmvc.config;

import org.springframework.web.servlet.support.AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer;

public class MySpringMvcDispatcherServletInitializer extends AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer {

	@Override
	protected Class<?>[] getRootConfigClasses() {
		return null;
	}

	@Override
	protected Class<?>[] getServletConfigClasses() {
		return new Class[] {AppConfig.class};
	}

	@Override
	protected String[] getServletMappings() {
		return new String[] {"/"};
	}

}

Create a Java model

Inside src/main/java create a package in.bushansirgur.springmvc.model, under this create Employee.java and add the following content

package in.bushansirgur.springmvc.model;

import java.util.LinkedHashMap;

public class Employee {
	
	private String firstName;
	
	private String lastName;
	
	private String country;
	
	private LinkedHashMap<String, String> countryOptions;

	public Employee() {
		countryOptions = new LinkedHashMap<String, String>();
		countryOptions.put("IND", "India");
		countryOptions.put("AUS", "Australia");
		countryOptions.put("GER", "Germany");
		countryOptions.put("CAN", "Canada");
		countryOptions.put("SAF", "South Africa");
	}
	
	public String getFirstName() {
		return firstName;
	}

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

	public String getLastName() {
		return lastName;
	}

	public void setLastName(String lastName) {
		this.lastName = lastName;
	}

	public String getCountry() {
		return country;
	}

	public void setCountry(String country) {
		this.country = country;
	}

	public LinkedHashMap<String, String> getCountryOptions() {
		return countryOptions;
	}

	public void setCountryOptions(LinkedHashMap<String, String> countryOptions) {
		this.countryOptions = countryOptions;
	}
	
}

Create a Controller

Inside src/main/java create a package in.bushansirgur.springmvc.controller, under this create HomeController.java and add the following content

package in.bushansirgur.springmvc.controller;

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 in.bushansirgur.springmvc.model.Employee;

@Controller
public class HomeController {
	
	@RequestMapping(value = "/")
	public String showHomePage(Model theModel) {
		theModel.addAttribute("employee", new Employee());
		return "home-page";
	}
	
	@RequestMapping(value = "/processForm")
	public String showDashboardPage(@ModelAttribute("employee") Employee theEmployee, Model theModel) {
		theModel.addAttribute("employee", theEmployee);
		return "dashboard";
	}
}

@ModelAttribute annotation will bind the form values to the Java object.

Create a view template

Create home-page.jsp inside webapp/WEB-INF/view folder and add the following content

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
    pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%>
<%@taglib prefix="form" uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags/form"%>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="ISO-8859-1">
<title>Insert title here</title>
</head>
<body>
	<h1>Read the textbox value</h1>
	<hr/>
	<form:form action="processForm" modelAttribute="employee">
		First Name:<form:input path="firstName" /><br/><br/>
		Last Name: <form:input path="lastName" /><br/><br/>
		Country: <form:select path="country">
			<form:options items="${employee.countryOptions}" />
		</form:select>
		<button type="submit">Submit</button>
	</form:form>
</body>
</html>

model attribute in the <form:form> tag takes the name of the model which we added to the Model object in handler method.

Create dashboard.jsp inside webapp/WEB-INF/view folder and add the following content

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
    pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="ISO-8859-1">
<title>Insert title here</title>
</head>
<body>
	<h1>Read the textbox value</h1>
	<hr/>
	<p>Employee First name: ${employee.firstName}</p>
	<p>Employee Last name: ${employee.lastName}</p>
	<p>Employee country: ${employee.country}</p>
</body>
</html>

Run the App

Start the tomcat server, navigate to the URL localhost:8080/springmvc/

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