Spring MVC Password Example

In this tutorial, we will create a simple Spring MVC Form to accept a password from the user with Springs <form:password> tag library. Here we will create a simple Spring MVC form with two password fields and we will add validation support to check if it is not empty and size is between 1 and 5. We will also look into the showPassword attribute of the <form:password> tag.

In Spring MVC we will use <form:password/> tag to render a password field

<form:password path="password"/>

Which produces the below HTML code.

<input id="password" name="password" type="password" value=""/>

Folder Structure :

Create a Dynamic Web Project SpringMVCFormHandling and create a package for our src files “com.javainterviewpoint“
Place the Spring 3 jar files under WEB-INF/Lib

commons-logging-1.1.1.jar
log4j-1.2.16.jar
slf4j-api-1.7.5.jar
slf4j-log4j12-1.7.5.jar
hibernate-validator-4.2.0.Final.jar
spring-aspects-3.2.4.RELEASE.jar
spring-beans-3.2.4.RELEASE.jar
spring-context-3.2.4.RELEASE.jar
spring-core-3.2.4.RELEASE.jar
spring-expression-3.2.4.RELEASE.jar
spring-web-3.2.4.RELEASE.jar
spring-webmvc-3.2.4.RELEASE.jar
validation-api-1.1.0.Final.jar
jstl-1.1.2.jar
Create the Java classes MVC_Controller.java and RegistrationBean.java under com.javainterviewpoint folder.
Place the SpringConfig-servlet.xml and web.xml under the WEB-INF directory
View files SpringMVC_TextBoxExample.jsp and Success.jsp are put under the sub directory under WEB-INF/Jsp

MVC_Controller.java

The DispatcherServlet mapping which we make in the web.xml will delegate the all the request to our MVC_Controller as we have annotated it with @Controller annotation.
We use the @RequestMapping annotation to map each of the requests which we get to individual methods. Our controller has two methods initializeForm() and processForm().
The firstMethod (initializeForm) will take the user to the “SpringMVC_PasswordExample” which is our view component with form backing object RegistrationBean.
The Second method (processForm) will get called when the user submits the form. There the RegistrationBean object “rb” will be validated as we have annotated with @Valid annotation and the validation results will be added to the BindingResult. Based on the result we will re-direct the user back to the “SpringMVC_PasswordExample” or “Success” page.

package com.javainterviewpoint;

import javax.validation.Valid;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.validation.BindingResult;
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.servlet.ModelAndView;

@Controller
public class MVC_Controller 
{
	@RequestMapping("/PasswordExample")
	public ModelAndView initializeForm()
	{
		return new ModelAndView("SpringMVC_PasswordExample","rb",new RegistrationBean());
	}
	@RequestMapping(value="/check",method=RequestMethod.POST)
	public String processForm(@Valid @ModelAttribute("rb")RegistrationBean rb,BindingResult result)
	{
		if(result.hasErrors())
		{
			return "SpringMVC_PasswordExample";
		}
		else
		{
			return "Success";
		}
	}
}

Model

RegistrationBean.java

Our RegistrationBean act as a Model here, which has two String properties password and confirmPassword, which has its own getters and setters so that it can be accessed from the view.

We have added the annotation @NotEmpty and @Size to check if the fields are not empty and size is between 1 and 5. We have added the respective custom error messages in the props.property file.

package com.javainterviewpoint;

import javax.validation.constraints.Size;
import org.hibernate.validator.constraints.NotEmpty;

public class RegistrationBean 
{
	@NotEmpty
	@Size(min=1,max=5)
	String password;
	@NotEmpty
	@Size(min=1,max=5)
	String confirmPassword;
	public String getPassword() {
		return password;
	}
	public void setPassword(String password) {
		this.password = password;
	}
	public String getConfirmPassword() {
		return confirmPassword;
	}
	public void setConfirmPassword(String confirmPassword) {
		this.confirmPassword = confirmPassword;
	}
}

View

Our view component has two text fields Password and Confirm Password generated by using the Spring form tag library. The <form:form> has a noticeable property called as the “commandName” which has the name of the backing bean that is bound to the model(RegistrtationBean rb).

<form:errors> tag displays the error message which occurs during the validation. <form:password> has a property showPassword which will render the password displayed even when the validation error has occurred. So that we can correct our password from there itself.