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Spring MVC - Customizing ConfigurableWebBindingInitializer

[Last Updated: Dec 28, 2017]

Spring MVC uses a WebBindingInitializer to initialize a WebDataBinder for a given request. We can use ConfigurableWebBindingInitializer to initialize a custom WebBindingInitializer.

In following example, we will register a custom PropertyEditor globally via ConfigurableWebBindingInitializer. To accomplish that, we will not use @EnableWebMvc annotation, instead we will use a plain @Configuration class which will extend WebMvcConfigurationSupport directly, we will then override getConfigurableWebBindingInitializer() method.

From @EnableWebMvc docs:

If WebMvcConfigurer does not expose some more advanced setting that needs to be configured consider removing the @EnableWebMvc annotation and extending directly from WebMvcConfigurationSupport or DelegatingWebMvcConfiguration

Note that ConfigurableWebBindingInitializer is used by RequestMappingHandlerAdapter to apply data conversion, formatting and validation for the requests.

Example

Spring Controller

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/")
public class TradeController {

  @GetMapping("/trade")
  @ResponseBody
  public String handleRequest(@RequestParam Date tradeDate) {
      return "request received for " + tradeDate;
  }
}

Java Config class

@Configuration
@ComponentScan
public class MyWebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurationSupport {

  @Override
  protected ConfigurableWebBindingInitializer getConfigurableWebBindingInitializer() {
      ConfigurableWebBindingInitializer initializer = super.getConfigurableWebBindingInitializer();
      initializer.setPropertyEditorRegistrar(propertyEditorRegistry -> {
          SimpleDateFormat dateFormatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");
          propertyEditorRegistry.registerCustomEditor(Date.class,
                  new CustomDateEditor(dateFormatter, true));
      });
      return initializer;
  }
}

In above example, we are not completely replacing ConfigurableWebBindingInitializer, but rather customizing it to use a custom PropertyEditor globally.

To try examples, run embedded tomcat (configured in pom.xml of example project below):

mvn tomcat7:run-war

Output

Note that, starting Spring 3.1+, a custom property editor registered via the method described here doesn't work in Spring MVC data binding.

Example Project

Dependencies and Technologies Used:

  • spring-webmvc 5.0.2.RELEASE: Spring Web MVC.
  • javax.servlet-api 3.1.0 Java Servlet API
  • JDK 1.8
  • Maven 3.3.9

Customizing ConfigurableWebBindingInitializer Example Select All Download
  • custom-web-binding-initializer
    • src
      • main
        • java
          • com
            • logicbig
              • example
                • MyWebConfig.java

    See Also