<form:options> does not bind correct value on displaying data

[kantorn]

SWF: 2.2.1
Spring: 3.0.5

I have the following problem: when I retrieve an object everything is bound correctly except a value dislplayed in a <form:options> tag. i.e. when I create the view and the underlying object is persisted, everything works ok, but when I retrieve the object, the first value in the drop.down is displayed instead of the correct one. The docs say that <form:options> should take care of this.

It is a mixed MVC and Spring Web Flow application.
I have registered a Formatter like so:

@Component
public class InstitutionFormatter implements Formatter<Institution> {
	
	@Autowired
	private InstitutionDao institutionDao;

	@Override
	public String print(Institution object, Locale locale) {
		System.out.println("QQQ-print: " + object.getId());
		return String.valueOf(object.getId());
	}

	@Override
	public Institution parse(String text, Locale locale) throws ParseException {
		if(text == null) {
			return null;
		} else {
			System.out.println("QQQ-parse: " + text);
			return institutionDao.findById(Long.valueOf(text));
		}
	}

}

webmvc-config.xml

<mvc:annotation-driven conversion-service="applicationConversionService"/>
	
	<!-- Conversion services -->
	<bean id="applicationConversionService" class="se.kmh.edudb.web.propertyeditor.CustomFormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean"/>

webFlow-config.xml

<webflow:flow-builder-services 	development="true" 
									id="flowBuilderServices" 
									view-factory-creator="mvcViewFactoryCreator" 
									conversion-service="defaultConversionService"/>

	<bean id="defaultConversionService" class="org.springframework.binding.convert.service.DefaultConversionService">
		<constructor-arg ref="applicationConversionService"/>
	</bean>

This is according to the docs. The formatter factory:

public class CustomFormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean extends FormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean {
	
	@Autowired
	private InstitutionFormatter institutionFormatter;

	@Override
	protected void installFormatters(FormatterRegistry registry) {
		super.installFormatters(registry);
		registry.addFormatterForFieldType(Institution.class, institutionFormatter);
	}
	
}

Still the <form:options> doesn't do its job to bind correctly when I display. Does anybody know why, and what are the alternatives? Plain old <c:forEach> ?

[kantorn]

<tr>
			<td class="label">Institution:</td>
			<td>
			<form:select cssClass="" path="institution">
				<form:options items="${institutions}" itemValue="id" itemLabel="name" />
			</form:select>
			</td>
		</tr>

[kantorn]

Got excellent help from this thread:
http://forum.springsource.org/showthread.php?t=77285

The trick is to implement equals() and hashCode(), otherwise the drop-down will not know which value to display.

Cheers!