what is the successor for simpleformcontroller

[victorysoccer]

it is only mentioned in the spring 3.0 document that simpleformcontroller will be deprecated as of Spring 3.0, in favor of annotated controllers.

what is the successor for such form handling controllers?

[Marten Deinum]

There is no class there is @Controller which is also explained in the same documentation.

[jamestastic]

For example.

[anindya.becs]

Not sure if I understand this correctly.. but isn't the annotated controllers taking away the beauty and the convenience of springs a bit.. say currently for a support person to know any URL and which controller it maps to he can simply look at the spring context file ..
And all the information is there ..

With these annotated controllers you do not need a xml entry.. So the mapping information is spread everywhere in the java file.. It looks quite messy to me.In case of issues we may have to look through the java files for the appropriate mapping info.. Why are we so upbeat about this , to me it looks like a potential support hazard.. Please correct me if I am worng.

[Marten Deinum]

With these annotated controllers you do not need a xml entry.. So the mapping information is spread everywhere in the java file.. It looks quite messy to me.In case of issues we may have to look through the java files for the appropriate mapping info.. Why are we so upbeat about this , to me it looks like a potential support hazard.. Please correct me if I am worng.

The fact that you use annotations doesn't mean that you cannot use the xml configuration anymore. In fact you can mix and match.

[jamestastic]

Why are we so upbeat about this , to me it looks like a potential support hazard..

It's certainly an interesting point, and it often comes down to a judgment call. Some people will prefer the simplicity of annotation-based configuration, while others will prefer the centralized nature of XML-based configuration.

For support purposes, consider what resources a support team will use to understand the system. While they could look through the code or configuration, perhaps it would be better to have technical documentation covering the design and configuration details of the system. If a given controller method is bound to a given URL, surely this would be documented in a requirement or at least a technical design document somewhere. Then this document could serve as the information repository for a support team, and the implementation specifics, such as whether annotations or XML configuration was used, would be of less significance.