command name/class defined - why can't my jsp see it?

**rafuzo** · Mar 28th, 2007, 04:05 PM

Hello,

I'm having some trouble binding to my command object with spring:bind in my jsp view. Here is the relevant code form my servlet.xml:

Code:

<bean id="stateController" class="springdev.StateController">
        <property name="sessionForm" value="true" />
        <property name="commandName" value="state" />
        <property name="commandClass" value="bus.State" />
        <property name="formView" value="selectstate" />

The "State" object looks like this:

Code:

public class State implements Serializable {
    private List<County> counties;
    private String name;

    public List<County> getCounties() {
        return counties;
    }

    public void setCounties(List<County> counties) {
        this.counties = counties;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    } ...

And I am trying to bind to that State state object like so:

Code:

<spring:bind path="state.name">

Yet I am getting this error:
org.apache.jasper.JasperException: Neither Errors instance nor plain target object for bean name 'state' available as request attribute

I've seen a few threads here which touch on similar issues people have, but they seem to involve more sophisticated usage of the bind tags. Personally I find the spring tag references to be lacking in exposition and code example, and as a result I might not be using the tags properly.

I think this is enough code to make sense of it (assume that my viewResolvers and web.xml are configured properly), but if you need more I'll be happy to provide it. Thanks!

**leonardoborges** · Mar 28th, 2007, 04:25 PM

Can you post your controller and full jsp code?

It'll be of use trying to understand your environment.

**rafuzo** · Mar 29th, 2007, 07:42 AM

Originally Posted by leonardoborges

Can you post your controller and full jsp code?

It'll be of use trying to understand your environment.

Here it is - fairly simplistic as I'm trying more to understand how binding at the view level interacts with Spring, especially with regard to how the command object gets populated.

First, a couple assumptions on my part, please correct them if they are wrong:
1) I should not specify a pre-existing bean as my command object in my servlet.xml specification of the controller bean
2) the bean specification of the controller will instantiate the command object that will be bound to by the form view
3) formBackingObject does not necessarily need to be overridden in a SimpleFormController subclass like the one here.

Thanks for your help!

Code:

public class StateController extends SimpleFormController {
    private StateAggregate stateAggregate;

    @Override
    protected Map referenceData(HttpServletRequest request) throws Exception {
        HashMap map = new HashMap();
        map.put("myStates", getStateAggregate());
        return(map);
    }

    @Override
    protected ModelAndView onSubmit(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, Object command, BindException bindEx) throws Exception {
        State input = (State) command;
        if(isFormSubmission(request)) {
            Iterator<State> i =  getStateAggregate().getStates().iterator();
            while(i.hasNext()) {
                State s = i.next();
                if(s.getName().equalsIgnoreCase(input.getName()))
                    input.setCounties(s.getCounties());
            }
        }
        command = input;
        return new ModelAndView(getSuccessView());
    }
 }

**leonardoborges** · Mar 29th, 2007, 07:48 AM

Ok, can I see your full jsp code also?

**leonardoborges** · Mar 29th, 2007, 07:51 AM

Also which Spring version you're using?

**rafuzo** · Mar 29th, 2007, 07:54 AM

Originally Posted by leonardoborges

Ok, can I see your full jsp code also?

I am using Spring 1.2. Here's my view.

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%>

<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/core_rt" %>
<%@ taglib prefix="fmt" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/fmt" %>
<%@ taglib prefix="fn" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/functions" %>
<%@ taglib prefix="spring" uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags" %>

Code:

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<head><title>Select a State</title></head>
<body>
<h2>Select your state:</h2>
<spring:bind path="state.name">
<form method="post">
<select name="<c:out value="${status.expression}" />" >
    <c:forEach items="${myStates.states}" var="state">
        <option value="<c:out value="${state.name}" />" />
            <c:if test="${status.value} == ${state.name}">selected</c:if>
            <c:out value="${state.name}"/>
            </option>
            </c:forEach>
            </select>
</spring:bind>
<input type="submit" value="Go">
</form>
<hr/>

    <c:if test="${!empty state.name}">
        <h2><c:out value="${state.name}"/> Counties</h2>
    </c:if>


</body>
</html>

**leonardoborges** · Mar 29th, 2007, 09:07 AM

I'm not quite familiar with this version of spring.

Is there any restrictions for using the new 2.0 version?
In this version spring has a form taglib (http://www.springframework.org/docs/...mvc-formtaglib) that I find more powerful, and is working great for situations like yours.

**rafuzo** · Mar 29th, 2007, 09:10 AM

Unfortunately there is such a restriction. I've seen the taglib for 2.0 and it's very enticing! I could probably solve my problem with it but I am stuck with 1.2 for the time being.

**leonardoborges** · Mar 29th, 2007, 09:17 AM

That's not nice!

Well, I'm not really sure how different is the use of spring:bind andthe new taglib. Perhaps, if someone who worked with this version could step in and give an opinion.

**pmularien** · Mar 29th, 2007, 09:47 AM

That looks absolutely fine to me - is it possible that your controller isn't mapped correctly to that page? How are you accessing the page (what URL are you providing), and please post the parts of your Spring config related to mapping and view resolution.

Thread: command name/class defined - why can't my jsp see it?

Thread Tools

Display

command name/class defined - why can't my jsp see it?

Posting Permissions