Spring MVC servlet specification compatibility

[kbaum]

One of our teams is debating whether to use struts or spring for MVC. Having worked first hand with both, I recommended they go with Spring. One of their cons, however, is that Spring mvc does not support Servlet specification 2.2 and because of other requirements, they need to use Tomcat 3.2.4. I pointed them to the documentation on Creating an ApplicationContext from a web application which mentions ContextLoaderServlet 2.2 support, but I cannot find an explicit statement on spring mvc's compatibility with Servlet 2.2. Is there a definitive statement I can point them towards?

Thanks.

-karl

[robh]

Karl,

There should be no issues running on Servlet 2.2 as long as you use the ContextLoaderServlet instead of ContextLoaderListener.

Rob

[kbaum]

I thought that was the case. One issue that is swaying them toward struts, however, is the lack of jstl tag support in servlet 2.2. I pointed them toward using velocity templating (I think that is servlet 2.2 compatible), but I doubt they will go away from jsp's.

Do you think it's feasible to use spring mvc and jsp's without the convenience of jstl tags?

[robh]

Its hard to build forms using Spring MVC if you don't have access to certain tag interfaces like IterationTag which are not present in JSP 1.1. If you can't use Velocity or FreeMarker then you should assess something other than SpringMVC.

Rob

[kbaum]

Thanks for the advice Rob! I'll fill them in.