Spring MVC and ajax requests

[dany6883]

hello guys I'm using Spring 3.1 MVC and I have a simple search form:

    <form:form id="formSearch" method="post" modelAttribute="searchCriteria" >
        <div id="freeflowlabel">   
            <p style="text-align:left;">
                <span style="font-family:Arial;font-size:16px;font-weight:bold;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;color:#333333;">${configProperties['cat.search.title']}</span>
            </p>
        </div>       
        <form:input id="freeFlowInputId" path="freeFlowText" />
        <p></p>
        <div id="advancedSearch">

        </div>
        <!--input id="searchButtonId" type="submit" value=${configProperties['cat.search.button']} style="cursor: pointer;"-->

        <button id="loadDataButton" onClick="loadData()">Search</button>
    </form:form>

If I use the button submit (now commented) all is working well and in the server side I have the Model Attribute SearchCriteria containing the input inserted by the user in the form.

Since I would like to search and show a table I would like to update just the table doing an ajax request and this ajax request is executed inside the methos loadData() attached to the search button. In this case I tried three ways:

1) form.submit() nothing happen, on server side the bean has null attributes

2) I'm using YUI as form so I tried to serialize a form but I receive an error: application/x-www-form-urlencoded is not supported

3) I can do a serialization on JSON and send the form value in the body of the ajax POST request; this works but it's not so elegant and then I'm going to lose all the facility provided by form:tags....

How can I solve this problem?

I think that should be a relevant problem the interaction between Ajax and spring so I hope that there is a clean solution

thank you
Daniele Ippoliti

[Marten Deinum]

If the form submit submits null values your submit is wrong (i.e. your javascript function is wrong).

I don't now YUI good enough to give a solution for that but the exception you get is you are propably issuing a GET request whereas your controller is for POST request. So switch the mechanism.

[dany6883]

Hello,

I checked and I'm doing a POST request... the exception that I'm receiving is:

org.springframework.web.HttpMediaTypeNotSupportedException: Content type 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8' not supported
        at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.AbstractMessageConverterMethodArgumentResolver.readWithMessageConverters(AbstractMessageConve
        at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.AbstractMessageConverterMethodArgumentResolver.readWithMessageConverters(AbstractMessageConve
        at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestResponseBodyMethodProcessor.resolveArgument(RequestResponseBodyMethodProcessor.java:71
        at org.springframework.web.method.support.HandlerMethodArgumentResolverComposite.resolveArgument(HandlerMethodArgumentResolverComposite.java:75)
        at org.springframework.web.method.support.InvocableHandlerMethod.getMethodArgumentValues(InvocableHandlerMethod.java:156)
        at org.springframework.web.method.support.InvocableHandlerMethod.invokeForRequest(InvocableHandlerMethod.java:117)
        at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.ServletInvocableHandlerMethod.invokeAndHandle(ServletInvocableHandlerMethod.java:96)
        at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerAdapter.invokeHandlerMethod(RequestMappingHandlerAdapter.java:617)
        at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.RequestMappingHandlerAdapter.handleInternal(RequestMappingHandlerAdapter.java:578)
        at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.AbstractHandlerMethodAdapter.handle(AbstractHandlerMethodAdapter.java:80)
        at org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doDispatch(DispatcherServlet.java:923)
        at org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet.doService(DispatcherServlet.java:852)
        at org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.processRequest(FrameworkServlet.java:882)
        at org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.doPost(FrameworkServlet.java:789)
        at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:637)
        at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:717)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:290)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:206)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:233)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:191)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:127)
        at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:102)
        at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:109)
        at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:298)
        at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11AprProcessor.process(Http11AprProcessor.java:861)

the POST request is this:
Post.jpg

and in the header I have

Content-Type application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8

it's the format that YUI or jquery or whatever serialize form...

thanks
Daniele

[Marten Deinum]

Then fix the way you post the form. As it is expected that the BODY contains everything NOT the URL (which is what is happening now). So I suggest check the docs for the JS library you use on how to change it. If that isn't what you want then do a normal form submit and don't change the controller to have a @RequestBody annotation in the signature.

[dany6883]

Then fix the way you post the form. As it is expected that the BODY contains everything NOT the URL (which is what is happening now). So I suggest check the docs for the JS library you use on how to change it. If that isn't what you want then do a normal form submit and don't change the controller to have a @RequestBody annotation in the signature.

I'm checking the doc, but my scope is have a search form with a button that do an ajax request on server side because I need to update just the result table and not all the page, so iI have to call a javascript function to do the ajax call and in the ajax call I'm trying to pass the form search criteria, then if I do in the javascript function myForm.submit() I will have the reload of the page that is what I want to avoid...

thank you
Daniele

[dany6883]

I'm checking the doc, but my scope is have a search form with a button that do an ajax request on server side because I need to update just the result table and not all the page, so iI have to call a javascript function to do the ajax call and in the ajax call I'm trying to pass the form search criteria, then if I do in the javascript function myForm.submit() I will have the reload of the page that is what I want to avoid...

thank you
Daniele

and what's about Spring.remoting.submitForm( have you ever used it?