Spring MVC 3.1 can send either JSON or HTML response on the same URL, depending on the type of response requested. With this mechanism, a page can be sent when directly requested from a link, but a JSON response can be sent in response to an AJAX request. This is the controller code: package com.example; import java.util.Map; ... In the above example, JSON response will be sent when the HTTP request contains header "Accept: application/json". HTML response will be sent then the header is "Accept: */*", or "Accept: text/html", or anything else. You can add a limitation that the HTML response does not produce "application/json". But then the question is which response will be sent when the HTTP header is "Accept: */*"? Both methods will...

These bean types are essential for the Spring MVC framework. I copied them here from the Spring Documentation for quick reference. Bean type Explanation HandlerMapping Maps incoming requests to handlers and a list of pre- and post-processors (handler interceptors) based on some criteria the details of which vary by HandlerMapping implementation. The most popular implementation supports annotated controllers but other implementations exists as well. HandlerAdapter Helps the DispatcherServlet to invoke a handler mapped to a request regardless of the handler is actually invoked. For example, invoking an annotated controller requires resolving various annotations. Thus the main purpose of a HandlerAdapter is to shield the DispatcherServlet from such details. HandlerExceptionResolver Maps exceptions to views also allowing for more complex exception handling code. ViewResolver Resolves logical String-based...

After a user resets a password, I want to force the user to change the password before she gets access to secured content. This is usually done with a servlet filter. But with Spring MVC, you can also use a HandlerInterceptor . According to Spring JavaDoc: HandlerInterceptor is basically similar to a Servlet 2.3 Filter, but in contrast to the latter it just allows custom pre-processing with the option of prohibiting the execution of the handler itself, and custom post-processing. Filters are more powerful, for example they allow for exchanging the request and response objects that are handed down the chain. Note that a filter gets configured in web.xml, a HandlerInterceptor in the application context. As a basic guideline, fine-grained handler-related preprocessing tasks are candidates...

This may or may not be useful, but I did the research so here's the code. import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotatio...

Some example snippets for Spring message configuration and usage. To configure a message source in Spring context (basename=messages): <bean id="messageSource" class="org.springf... Locale change interceptor can also be setup with: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <beans x... The messages file should be named messages.properties (or messages_en.properties , etc.) and located on CLASSPATH , for example: WEB-INF/classes . To use a message resource in JSP: <%@ taglib prefix="spring" uri="http://www.springf...

You can customize Tomcat error page with error code: <error-page> <error-code>404</error-code> ... or Java exception type: <error-page> <exception-type>java.lang.Throwab... Either error-code or exception-type is required, but not both. There's no way to aggregate error codes, such as: <!-- This does not work! --> <error-page> ... Customizing error pages is about the only way to suppress the default stack trace in Tomcat in case of an unhandled exception.

flowplayer is another way to embed Flash in a web page. The code looks like this: <object width="6400" height="380" data="swf/flowpl... You need to download two swf files: http://releases.flowplayer.org/swf/flowplayer-3.2.1.swf http://releases.flowplayer.org/swf/flowplayer.controls-3.2.0.swf

Video for Everybody seems to be a generic way to embed video in a web page, even without flash. This code snippet comes from that site. <!-- first try HTML5 playback: if serving as XML, ...

You can define environment variables in the Tomcat context.xml file like this: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <Context... which is equivalent to the following in web.xml : <env-entry> <env-entry-name>varName</env-entr... In Java code, the variable can be looked up like this: // import javax.naming.Context; // import javax...

My problem is simple: in my XML data, a timestamp is provided as a long integer (number of milliseconds since the "the epoch"). When I do XSLT, I want to display it as a readable string, such as "Mon Nov 01 18:08:48 CDT 2010". After hours of struggle, I found: It's not so easy to get the job done with JDK 1.6 There are tons of garbage on the web in this space (suggestions, code snippets that simply don't work) Simple Xalan extension functions was the only resource that's somewhat informative. Even there some of the examples don't work. Below is a list of what worked and what didn't. This works: <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="h... This does not (providing long value to Date constructor): <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="h......