Spring MVC - BeanNameViewResolver Example

BeanNameViewResolver maps a view name to a bean name in the current application context. The matching bean must implement the View interface so that it can be executed by DispatcherServlet to render the view.

Example

A custom view

public class MyCustomView implements View {

    @Override
    public String getContentType() {
        return "text/html";
    }

    @Override
    public void render(Map<String, ?> model, HttpServletRequest request,
                       HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
        response.setContentType(getContentType());
        PrintWriter writer = response.getWriter();
        writer.println("This is my custom dummy view.<br/>");
        writer.println("<h3>Model attributes</h3>");
        for (Map.Entry<String, ?> entry : model.entrySet()) {
            writer.printf("%s = %s<br/>", entry.getKey(), entry.getValue());
        }
    }
}

Registering BeanNameViewResolver and the view as Bean

@EnableWebMvc
@Configuration
@ComponentScan
public class MyWebConfig {

    @Bean
    public ViewResolver viewResolver() {
        return new BeanNameViewResolver();
    }

    @Bean("simpleView")
    public View myCustomView() {
        return new MyCustomView();
    }
}

Alternative way to register BeanNameViewResolver

As an alternative to above configuration, we can enable BeanNameViewResolver by overriding configureViewResolvers() method of WebMvcConfigurerAdapter:

public class MyWebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {

    @Override
    public void configureViewResolvers (ViewResolverRegistry registry) {
        registry.beanName();
    }

    @Bean("simpleView")
    public View myCustomView() {
        return new MyCustomView();
    }
}

Writing a Controller

The controller that is going to return our bean name as the view name.

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/")
public class MyController {
    
    @RequestMapping
    public String handleRequest (Model model) {
        model.addAttribute("msg", "A message from the controller");
        model.addAttribute("time", LocalTime.now());
        return "simpleView";
    }
}

Output

Example Project

Dependencies and Technologies Used:

• spring-webmvc 4.3.10.RELEASE: Spring Web MVC.
• javax.servlet-api 3.1.0 Java Servlet API
• JDK 1.8
• Maven 3.3.9