In this tutorial we are going to understand mechanism of passing data via template variables in redirect URLs.
When redirecting to another URL, the attributes—whether added to the plain Model (the older, broader approach) or explicitly to RedirectAttributes (the modern, preferred approach)— are first matched against any URI template variables (via {} placeholders) in the redirect URL. Any matched attributes are substituted into the path, and only the remaining unmatched attributes are appended as query parameters.
Example
Redirecting with template variables
package com.logicbig.example;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PathVariable;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestParam;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ResponseBody;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.support.RedirectAttributes;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.view.RedirectView;
@Controller
public class MyController {
@RequestMapping(value = "test/{id}")
public RedirectView handleTestRequest(Model model,
RedirectAttributes ra) {
//pre-Spring 6:
//model.addAttribute("attr", "attrVal");
//model.addAttribute("testPath", "pathValue");
ra.addAttribute("attr", "attrVal");
ra.addAttribute("testPath", "pathValue");
RedirectView rv = new RedirectView();
rv.setContextRelative(true);
rv.setUrl("/test2/{testPath}/{id}");
return rv;
}
@ResponseBody
@RequestMapping("test2/{testPath}/{id}")
public String handleRequest(@PathVariable("testPath") String testPath,
@PathVariable("id") String id,
@RequestParam("attr") String attr) {
return String.format("test2 response, id: %s, "
+ "testPath: %s, "
+ "attr: %s",
id, testPath, attr);
}
}
As seen above, if the requested URL has template URI variable they can be redirected as it is.
In above example the template variable '{testPath}' matches with an attribute, so it will be automatically substituted. The remaining attributes will be appended as query string.
RedirectView.setContextRelative(true)
When set to true the redirected URL that starts with a slash ("/") is considered as relative to the current ServletContext, i.e. as relative to the web application root. Default is "false": A URL that starts with a slash will be interpreted as absolute, i.e. taken as-is. If "true", the context path will be prepended to the URL in such a case.
In above example if you don't set it to true, the redirected path will be considered as http://localhost:8080/test2/{id} instead of http://localhost:8080/context-root/test2/{id}
Also if we don't set the above flag and our redirected URL starts without a slash i.e. test2/{id} instead of /test2/{id}, the resultant redirected URL will be considered relative to the current path i.e. http://localhost:8080/context-root/test/test2/{id} instead of http://localhost:8080/context-root/test2/{id}
In practice we should always use a leading slash in redirected URL and set this flag to true if we want to work relative to application root.
Running the example
In browser, if we enter the URL http://localhost:8080/spring-redirect-pass-data/test/3, then browser will receive the new redirected URL as http://localhost:8080/spring-redirect-pass-data/test2/pathValue/3?attr=attrVal
Using curl
$ curl -s -iL "http://localhost:8080/spring-redirect-pass-data/test/3"
HTTP/1.1 302 Found
Server: Jetty(12.1.6)
Date: Thu, 06 Aug 2026 07:49:11 GMT
Content-Language: en-US
Location: /spring-redirect-pass-data/test2/pathValue/3?attr=attrVal
Content-Length: 0
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Jetty(12.1.6)
Date: Thu, 06 Aug 2026 07:49:11 GMT
Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Length: 57
test2 response, id: 3, testPath: pathValue, attr: attrVal
Integration Test
package com.logicbig.example;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.BeforeEach;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.mock.web.MockHttpSession;
import org.springframework.test.context.junit.jupiter.web.SpringJUnitWebConfig;
import org.springframework.test.web.servlet.assertj.MockMvcTester;
import org.springframework.web.context.WebApplicationContext;
import static org.assertj.core.api.Assertions.assertThat;
@SpringJUnitWebConfig(MyWebConfig.class)
public class ControllerTest {
@Autowired
private WebApplicationContext wac;
private MockMvcTester mockMvcTester;
@BeforeEach
public void setup() {
this.mockMvcTester = MockMvcTester.from(this.wac);
}
@Test
public void testController() {
MockHttpSession session = new MockHttpSession();
String redirectedUrl =
this.mockMvcTester.get()
.uri("/test/5")
.session(session)
.exchange()
.getResponse()
.getRedirectedUrl();
assertThat(redirectedUrl)
.isEqualTo("/test2/pathValue/5?attr=attrVal");
assertThat(this.mockMvcTester.get().uri(redirectedUrl)
.session(session)
.exchange())
.hasStatusOk()
.bodyText().isEqualTo(
"test2 response, "
+ "id: 5, "
+ "testPath: pathValue, "
+ "attr: attrVal");
}
}
mvn clean test -Dtest="ControllerTest" Output$ mvn clean test -Dtest="ControllerTest"
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO]
[INFO] -----------< com.logicbig.example:spring-redirect-pass-data >-----------
[INFO] Building spring-redirect-pass-data 1.0-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] from pom.xml
[INFO] --------------------------------[ war ]---------------------------------
[INFO]
[INFO] --- clean:3.2.0:clean (default-clean) @ spring-redirect-pass-data ---
[INFO] Deleting D:\example-projects\spring-mvc\spring-redirect-pass-data\target
[INFO]
[INFO] --- resources:3.3.1:resources (default-resources) @ spring-redirect-pass-data ---
[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-redirect-pass-data\src\main\resources
[INFO]
[INFO] --- compiler:3.15.0:compile (default-compile) @ spring-redirect-pass-data ---
[INFO] Recompiling the module because of changed source code.
[INFO] Compiling 3 source files with javac [debug target 25] to target\classes
[INFO]
[INFO] --- resources:3.3.1:testResources (default-testResources) @ spring-redirect-pass-data ---
[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-redirect-pass-data\src\test\resources
[INFO]
[INFO] --- compiler:3.15.0:testCompile (default-testCompile) @ spring-redirect-pass-data ---
[INFO] Recompiling the module because of changed dependency.
[INFO] Compiling 2 source files with javac [debug target 25] to target\test-classes
[INFO]
[INFO] --- surefire:3.2.5:test (default-test) @ spring-redirect-pass-data ---
[INFO] Using auto detected provider org.apache.maven.surefire.junitplatform.JUnitPlatformProvider
[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.ControllerTest
[INFO] Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 1.008 s -- in com.logicbig.example.ControllerTest
[INFO]
[INFO] Results:
[INFO]
[INFO] Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0
[INFO]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 5.556 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2026-08-06T16:23:56+08:00
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
INFO: Completed initialization in 0 ms
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.
- jakarta.servlet-api 6.1.0 (Jakarta Servlet API documentation)
- spring-test 7.0.6 (Spring TestContext Framework)
- junit-jupiter-engine 6.0.3 (Module "junit-jupiter-engine" of JUnit)
- hamcrest 3.0 (Core API and libraries of hamcrest matcher framework)
- assertj-core 3.26.3 (Rich and fluent assertions for testing in Java)
- JDK 25
- Maven 3.9.11
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