Annotated Controller/JSP Unable To Submit Simple Form

[walnutmon]

All, this the relevant code from my login page:

<form:form target="login.do" method="post">
                        <span style="font-size:77%;">
                            <label>email:</label>
                            <form:input path="userName" cssClass="textfield" cssStyle="width:160px;" title="user name" name="userName" type="text" />
                            &nbsp;
                            <label>password:</label>
                            <form:input path="password" cssClass="textfield" cssStyle="width:160px;" name="password" type="password" />
                            &nbsp;
                            <input value="Login" class="button" type="submit" style="margin-bottom:4px" />
                        </span>
                    </form:form>

and the controller:

@Controller
public class LoginController {

    @RequestMapping(value = "/login")
    public String login() {
        System.out.println("login");
        return "login";
    }

    @RequestMapping(value="/login.do", method=RequestMethod.POST)
    public String doLogin(@RequestParam String userName, @RequestParam String password) {
        System.out.println(userName);
        System.out.println(password);
        System.out.println("doLogin");
        return "login";
    }
}

now, I'm obviously not done with the implementation here, but I can't even get the simple code included to work (just printing out parameter), it throws an exception: "java.lang.IllegalStateException: Neither BindingResult nor plain target object for bean name 'command' available as request attribute" when I navigate to the page by going to the /login URL, which is odd, because I'm not even using the form at that point, I'm just going to the page with the form on it

so I have several questions:
1. how do I get my specific example to work
2. for my simple uses do I even need to use <form:form> tags, or can I just use a regular form?
3. this page will have another form on it as well, is there further considerations that I need to have because of that?
4. does anyone have a good spring 3 book to recommend?

[Marten Deinum]

I suggest the reference guide.

Short answer the spring form tags expect and require that you use a form object, if you don't use a simple html form instead of the form tags.