Spring Boot submit form
SpringBoot submit form tutorial shows how to submit a form in a Spring Boot application.
Spring Boot submit form
last modified July 29, 2023
In this article we show how to submit a form in a Spring Boot application.
Spring is a popular Java application framework. Spring Boot is an effort to create stand-alone, production-grade Spring based applications with minimal effort.
Spring Boot submit form example
The following application contains a simple form. The data from a form is automatically inserted into a UI bean and is available for a view. Thymeleaf is used as a view engine.
The application shows only the simple process of sending and processing a form. In reality, form submission requires extensive validation and security checks.
build.gradle … src ├───main │ ├───java │ │ └───com │ │ └───zetcode │ │ │ Application.java │ │ ├───bean │ │ │ User.java │ │ └───controller │ │ MyController.java │ └───resources │ └───templates │ addUser.html │ showMessage.html └───test └───java
This is the project structure.
build.gradle
plugins { id ‘org.springframework.boot’ version ‘3.1.1’ id ‘io.spring.dependency-management’ version ‘1.1.0’ id ‘java’ }
group = ‘com.zetcode’ version = ‘0.0.1-SNAPSHOT’ sourceCompatibility = ‘17’
repositories { mavenCentral() }
dependencies { implementation ‘org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web’ implementation ‘org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf’ }
test { useJUnitPlatform() }
This is the Gradle build file. The spring-boot-starter-web is starter for building web, including RESTful, applications using Spring MVC. The spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf is a starter for the Thymeleaf engine.
com/zetcode/bean/User.java
package com.zetcode.bean;
public class User {
private String name;
private String occupation;
public String getName() {
return name;
}
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
public String getOccupation() {
return occupation;
}
public void setOccupation(String occupation) {
this.occupation = occupation;
}
}
This is the User bean. It is automatically filled with data from the form request. The attributes must match the form fields.
com/zetcode/controller/MyController.java
package com.zetcode.controller;
import com.zetcode.bean.User; import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller; import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping; import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PostMapping;
@Controller public class MyController {
@GetMapping("/addUser")
public String sendForm(User user) {
return "addUser";
}
@PostMapping("/addUser")
public String processForm(User user) {
return "showMessage";
}
}
The controller class sends and reads a form view.
@PostMapping("/addUser") public String processForm(User user) {
return "showMessage";
}
The User bean is passed as a parameter to the processForm handler. Spring tries to fill the bean with the request data. The data is also automatically available for the Thymeleaf showMessage view.
resources/templates/addUser.html
<!DOCTYPE HTML> <html xmlns:th=“http://www.thymeleaf.org”> <head> <title>Add user</title> <meta charset=“UTF-8”> </head> <body>
<h1>Add User</h1>
<form action="#" th:action="@{/addUser}" th:object="${user}" method=“post”> <p> Name: <input type=“text” th:field="{name}"> </p> <p> Occupation: <input type=“text” th:field="{occupation}"> </p> <p> <input type=“submit” value=“Submit”/> <input type=“reset” value=“Reset”> </p> </form>
</body> </html>
This view contains the form.
<form action="#" th:action="@{/addUser}" th:object="${user}" method=“post”>
The th:object refers to the user form bean. This is not a class name, but a Spring bean name; therefore it is in lowercase.
<p> Name: <input type=“text” th:field="*{name}"> </p>
With the *{} syntax, we refer to the defined object.
resources/templates/showMessage.html
<!DOCTYPE HTML> <html xmlns:th=“http://www.thymeleaf.org”> <head> <title>Show message</title> <meta charset=“UTF-8”> </head> <body>
<h1>Result</h1>
<p th:text="‘Name: ’ + ${user.name}"></p> <p th:text="‘Occupation: ’ + ${user.occupation}"></p> <a href="/addUser">Submit another message</a>
</body> </html>
This template shows the data entered in the form.
<p th:text="‘Name: ’ + ${user.name}"></p>
We refer to the form bean attributes with the ${} syntax.
com/zetcode/Application.java
package com.zetcode;
import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication; import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication; import org.springframework.boot.web.servlet.support.SpringBootServletInitializer;
@SpringBootApplication public class Application extends SpringBootServletInitializer {
public static void main(String[] args) {
SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
}
}
The Application sets up the Spring Boot application.
Navigate to the localhost:8080/addUser to run the application.
In this article we have shown how to submit a simple form in a Spring Boot application.
Author
My name is Jan Bodnar, and I am a passionate programmer with extensive programming experience. I have been writing programming articles since 2007. To date, I have authored over 1,400 articles and 8 e-books. I possess more than ten years of experience in teaching programming.
