Creating a View/Output

Problem

How to return different view or output such as an Excel file, a PDF file, or a JSON object?

Pre-requisite

• Creating a Page

Solution

SpringMVC uses jsp as the default view, but you can always configure certain url to return a different view such as an Excel file, a PDF file, or JSON object.  There are generally three parts in setting up a different view.  First, create a controller that will listen to the specific url which you wish to return a different view.  Second, configureweb/WEB-INF/config/view.xml and map the different view to a view builder class.  Finally, add the appropriate third-party libraries to your web application, if necessary.

Excel

Assuming we want all URL student.xls to return information about a student in Excel.  First create a controller that will listen to the URL "student.xls".

@RequestMapping(value="student.xls")
public ModelAndView getStudentExcel(@RequestParam(value="id") String id, ModelMap model) {
    ...
    model.addAttribute("student", student);
    return new ModelAndView("studentExcelView", model);
}

Now add extra setting to map url ending with .xls to be handled by Spring MVC's controller in web.xml.

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>hello</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>*.xls</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

Next configure the web/WEB-INF/config/view.xml to map "studentExcelView" view name to a particular class that'll handle building the view.

<bean name="studentExcelView" class="edu.ucsd.act.hello.view.StudentExcelView"/>

Last step is to implement StudentExcelView class.  We will utilize heavily on Spring's build-in support for Excel view and Apache's POI library to build an Excel document.

import org.apache.poi.hssf.*;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.view.document.AbstractExcelView;

public class StudentExcelView extends AbstractExcelView {
    ...

PDF

Following the same concept as an Excel view, a PDF view has the same setup except the view builder class uses Spring's build-in support for PDF view and iText to build a PDF document.  Create a controller that'll handle the URL request

@RequestMapping(value="student.pdf")
public ModelAndView getStudentPdf(@ReqeustParam(value="id"), ModelMap model) {
    ...
    model.addAttribute("student", student);
    return new ModelAndView("studentPdfView", model);
}

Now add extra setting to map url ending with .pdf to be handled by Spring MVC's controller in web.xml.

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>hello</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>*.pdf</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping> 

The web/WEB-INF/config/view.xml will map "studentPdfView" view name toedu.ucsd.act.hello.view.StudentPdfView class.

<bean name="studentPdfView" class="edu.ucsd.act.hello.view.StudentPdfView"/>

And the actual StudentPdfView class will look something like this:

import com.lowagie.text.*;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.view.document.AbstractPdfView;

public class StudentExcelView extends AbstractPdfView {
    ...

JSON

Following the same concept as an Excel view, JSON will map a URL to a view builder class:

@RequestMapping(value="student.json")
public ModelAndView getStudentJson(@ReqeustParam(value="id"), ModelMap model) {
    ...
    model.addAttribute("student", student);
    return new ModelAndView("studentJsonView", model);
}

Now add extra setting to map url ending with .json to be handled by Spring MVC's controller in web.xml.

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>hello</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>*.json</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

And the view will have the following mapping info in web/WEB-INF/config/view.xml.

<bean name="studentJsonView" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.json.JsonView"/>

Despite what the package name suggests, this JsonView class is actually not part of the Spring framework.  It is a separate open source package called Spring-Json View.  And it will map any object or collection of objects into JSON format.  So in this case, you don't even need to create a view builder class.  Spring-Json View depends on SOJO.