In this example we are going to demonstrate a simple form submission using spring implicit data binding.
Create Form Backing Object
package com.logicbig.example;
public class User {
private Long id;
private String name;
private String password;
private String emailAddress;
.............
}
Create the controller
We are creating two handler methods one with RequestMethod.GET to response back with an empty registration form and other one with RequestMethod.POST to handle the form submission. Just like in Java Objects binding examples, we don't have to use any @ModelAttribute annotation because Spring's implicit data binding maps form fields to User object fields with matching names.
package com.logicbig.example;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PostMapping;
@Controller
@RequestMapping("/register")
public class UserRegistrationController {
@Autowired private UserService userService;
@GetMapping
public String handleGetRequest() {
return "user-registration";
}
@PostMapping
public String handlePostRequest(User user, Model model) {
userService.saveUser(user);
return "registration-done";
}
}
Create form page (user-registration.jsp)
src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/views/user-registration.jsp<%@ page language="java"
contentType="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%>
<html>
<body>
<h3> Registration Form <h3>
<br/>
<form action="register" method="post" >
<pre>
Name <input type="text" name="name" />
Email address <input type="text" name="emailAddress" />
Password <input type="password" name="password" />
<input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</pre>
</form>
</body>
</html>
Create Response Page (registration-done.jsp)
src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/views/registration-done.jsp<%@ page language="java"
contentType="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%>
<html>
<body>
<h3> Registration done </h3>
<p>User Name: ${user.name}
</body>
</html>
Running Example
To try examples, run embedded Jetty (configured in pom.xml of example project below):
mvn jetty:run
/spring-form-submission/register
On form submission
$ curl -s http://localhost:8080/register -d "name=Joe&emailAddress=joe@example.com&password=abc"
<html>
<body>
<h3> Registration done </h3>
<p>User Name: Joe
</body>
</html>
Integration Test
package com.logicbig.example;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.BeforeEach;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.extension.ExtendWith;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.test.context.ContextConfiguration;
import org.springframework.test.context.junit.jupiter.SpringExtension;
import org.springframework.test.context.web.WebAppConfiguration;
import org.springframework.test.web.servlet.assertj.MockMvcTester;
import org.springframework.test.web.servlet.setup.MockMvcBuilders;
import org.springframework.web.context.WebApplicationContext;
import static org.assertj.core.api.Assertions.assertThat;
@ExtendWith(SpringExtension.class)
@WebAppConfiguration
@ContextConfiguration(classes = MyWebConfig.class)
public class RegistrationControllerTest {
@Autowired
private WebApplicationContext wac;
// MockMvcTester is the new fluent entry point in Spring 7
private MockMvcTester mvcTester;
@Autowired
private UserService userService;
@BeforeEach
public void setup() {
this.mvcTester = MockMvcTester.from(wac);
}
@Test
public void testUserController() {
var result = this.mvcTester.post()
.uri("/register")
.param("name", "Joe")
.param("emailAddress", "joe@example.com")
.param("password", "abc")
.exchange();
// Use AssertJ assertions for the MVC response
assertThat(result).hasStatusOk()
.model().containsEntry("user", userService.getUserById(1L));
// Standard AssertJ for the business logic side
User user = userService.getUserById(1L);
assertThat(user.getName()).isEqualTo("Joe");
assertThat(user.getEmailAddress()).isEqualTo("joe@example.com");
assertThat(user.getPassword()).isEqualTo("abc");
}
}
mvn clean test -Dtest=RegistrationControllerTest Output$ mvn clean test -Dtest=RegistrationControllerTest
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[WARNING]
[WARNING] Some problems were encountered while building the effective model for com.logicbig.example:spring-mvc-form-submission:war:1.0-SNAPSHOT
[WARNING] 'build.plugins.plugin.version' for org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-war-plugin is missing. @ line 49, column 21
[WARNING]
[WARNING] It is highly recommended to fix these problems because they threaten the stability of your build.
[WARNING]
[WARNING] For this reason, future Maven versions might no longer support building such malformed projects.
[WARNING]
[INFO]
[INFO] ----------< com.logicbig.example:spring-mvc-form-submission >-----------
[INFO] Building spring-mvc-form-submission 1.0-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] from pom.xml
[INFO] --------------------------------[ war ]---------------------------------
[INFO]
[INFO] --- clean:3.2.0:clean (default-clean) @ spring-mvc-form-submission ---
[INFO] Deleting D:\example-projects\spring-mvc\spring-form-submission\target
[INFO]
[INFO] --- resources:3.3.1:resources (default-resources) @ spring-mvc-form-submission ---
[WARNING] Using platform encoding (UTF-8 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
[INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory D:\example-projects\spring-mvc\spring-form-submission\src\main\resources
[INFO]
[INFO] --- compiler:3.5.1:compile (default-compile) @ spring-mvc-form-submission ---
[INFO] Changes detected - recompiling the module!
[INFO] Compiling 6 source files to D:\example-projects\spring-mvc\spring-form-submission\target\classes
[INFO]
[INFO] --- resources:3.3.1:testResources (default-testResources) @ spring-mvc-form-submission ---
[WARNING] Using platform encoding (UTF-8 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
[INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory D:\example-projects\spring-mvc\spring-form-submission\src\test\resources
[INFO]
[INFO] --- compiler:3.5.1:testCompile (default-testCompile) @ spring-mvc-form-submission ---
[INFO] Changes detected - recompiling the module!
[INFO] Compiling 1 source file to D:\example-projects\spring-mvc\spring-form-submission\target\test-classes
[INFO]
[INFO] --- surefire:3.2.5:test (default-test) @ spring-mvc-form-submission ---
[INFO] Using auto detected provider org.apache.maven.surefire.junit4.JUnit4Provider
[WARNING] file.encoding cannot be set as system property, use <argLine>-Dfile.encoding=...</argLine> instead
[INFO]
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] T E S T S
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Running com.logicbig.example.RegistrationControllerTest
[INFO] Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.497 s -- in com.logicbig.example.RegistrationControllerTest
[INFO]
[INFO] Results:
[INFO]
[INFO] Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0
[INFO]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 3.597 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2026-04-05T21:11:46+08:00
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Example ProjectDependencies and Technologies Used: - spring-webmvc 7.0.6 (Spring Web MVC)
Version Compatibility: 3.2.9.RELEASE - 7.0.6 Version compatibilities of spring-webmvc with this example: Versions in green have been tested.
- spring-test 7.0.6 (Spring TestContext Framework)
- assertj-core 3.26.3 (Rich and fluent assertions for testing in Java)
- jakarta.servlet-api 6.1.0 (Jakarta Servlet API documentation)
- jakarta.servlet.jsp.jstl 3.0.1 (Jakarta Standard Tag Library Implementation)
- junit-jupiter-engine 6.0.3 (Module "junit-jupiter-engine" of JUnit)
- hamcrest 3.0 (Core API and libraries of hamcrest matcher framework)
- JDK 25
- Maven 3.9.11
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