Spring MVC Form Text Field

The Spring MVC form text field tag generates an HTML input tag using the bound value. By default, the type of the input tag is text.

Syntax

Here, path attribute binds the form field to the bean property.

The Spring MVC form tag library also provides other input types such as email, date, tel, etc.

For email:

For date:

Example of Spring MVC Form Text Field

Let's see an example to create a railway reservation form using form tag library.

1. Add dependencies to pom.xml file.

          <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.springframework/spring-webmvc -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
    <version>5.1.1.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>

    <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/javax.servlet/javax.servlet-api -->
<dependency>  
    <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>  
    <artifactId>servlet-api</artifactId>  
    <version>3.0-alpha-1</version>  
</dependency>

    <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/javax.servlet/jstl -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
    <artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
    <version>1.2</version>
</dependency>
<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.apache.tomcat/tomcat-jasper -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.tomcat</groupId>
    <artifactId>tomcat-jasper</artifactId>
    <version>9.0.12</version>
</dependency>

2. Create the bean class

Here, the bean class contains the variables (along setter and getter methods) corresponding to the input field exist in the form.

Reservation.java

package com.javatpoint;

public class Reservation {

	private String firstName;
	private String lastName;
	
	public Reservation()
	{		
	}
	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;
	}	
}

3. Create the controller class

ReservationController.java

package com.javatpoint;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ModelAttribute;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;

@RequestMapping("/reservation")
@Controller
public class ReservationController {
	@RequestMapping("/bookingForm")
public String bookingForm(Model model)
{
      //create a reservation object 
	Reservation res=new Reservation();
      //provide reservation object to the model 
	model.addAttribute("reservation", res);
	return "reservation-page";
}
@RequestMapping("/submitForm")
// @ModelAttribute binds form data to the object
public String submitForm(@ModelAttribute("reservation") Reservation res)
{
	return "confirmation-form";
}
}

4. Provide the entry of controller in the web.xml file

web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd" id="WebApp_ID" version="3.0">
  <display-name>SpringMVC</display-name>
   <servlet>  
    <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>  
    <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>  
    <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>    
</servlet>  
<servlet-mapping>  
    <servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>  
    <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>  
</servlet-mapping>  
</web-app>

5. Define the bean in the xml file

spring-servlet.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
	xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
	xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
	xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
	xsi:schemaLocation="
		http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
    	http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
    	http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
    	http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd
    	http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc.xsd">
	<!-- Provide support for component scanning -->
	<context:component-scan base-package="com.javatpoint" />
	<!--Provide support for conversion, formatting and validation -->
	<mvc:annotation-driven/>
	<!-- Define Spring MVC view resolver -->
     <bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
        <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/"></property>
        <property name="suffix" value=".jsp"></property>     
     </bean>
</beans>

6. Create the requested page

index.jsp

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
	<title>Railway Registration Form</title>
</head>
<body>
<a href="reservation/bookingForm">Click here for reservation.</a>
</body>
</html>

7. Create other view components

reservation-page.jsp

<%@ taglib prefix="form" uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags/form" %>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
	<title>Reservation Form</title>
</head>
<h3>Railway Reservation Form</h3>
<body>
	<form:form action="submitForm" modelAttribute="reservation">
		First name: <form:input path="firstName" />		
		<br><br>
		Last name: <form:input path="lastName" />
		<br><br>
		<input type="submit" value="Submit" />	
	</form:form>
</body>
</html>

Note - The value passed with the @ModelAttribute annotation should be the same to the modelAttribute value present in the view page.

confirmation-page.jsp

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<p>Your reservation is confirmed successfully. Please, re-check the details.</p>
First Name : ${reservation.firstName} <br>
Last Name : ${reservation.lastName}
</body>
</html>

Output: