Spring MVC 5 & Tomcat 9 - Unable to render the model attribute in the JSP

Question

I want to pass the model attribute to the JSP file and print it using the appropriate JSTL tags. When I call the /home, all I see is the tag I used to be placeholder (${name}) for the attribute; not the value I have set.

Here is my controller:

@Controller
@RequestMapping(value = "/*")
public class MainController {

    @RequestMapping(value = "/home", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public void home(Model model) {

        model.addAttribute("name", "John");
     }
}

The WebConfig class which implements WebMvcConfigurer

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@ComponentScan(basePackages = {"com.tk"})
public class WebConfig implements WebMvcConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void configureDefaultServletHandling(DefaultServletHandlerConfigurer configurer) {
        configurer.enable();
    }

    @Bean
    public InternalResourceViewResolver jspViewResolver() {
        InternalResourceViewResolver viewResolver = new InternalResourceViewResolver();
        viewResolver.setViewClass(JstlView.class);
        viewResolver.setPrefix("/WEB-INF/view/");
        viewResolver.setSuffix(".jsp");
        return viewResolver;
    }
}

WebAppInitializer class

public class WebAppInitializer implements WebApplicationInitializer {
    @Override
    public void onStartup(ServletContext servletContext) {
        AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext context = getContext();
        servletContext.addListener(new ContextLoaderListener(context));
        ServletRegistration.Dynamic dispatcherServlet = servletContext.addServlet("DispatcherServlet", new DispatcherServlet(context));
        dispatcherServlet.setLoadOnStartup(1);
        dispatcherServlet.addMapping("/");

        CharacterEncodingFilter characterEncodingFilter = new CharacterEncodingFilter();
        characterEncodingFilter.setEncoding("UTF-8");
        characterEncodingFilter.setForceEncoding(true);
        servletContext.addFilter("characterEncodingFilter", characterEncodingFilter).addMappingForUrlPatterns(null, false, "/*");
    }

    private AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext getContext() {
        AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext context = new AnnotationConfigWebApplicationContext();
        context.setConfigLocation("com.tk.spring5App.config");
        return context;
    }
}

home.jsp file content:

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8" pageEncoding="UTF-8" %>
<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>
<%@ taglib prefix="fmt" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/fmt" %>
<html>
<body>
<h1><c:out value="${name}"/></h1>
</body>
</html>

And finally here is my pom.xml file:

<properties>
    <java.version>1.8</java.version>
    <spring.framework.version>5.0.3.RELEASE</spring.framework.version>
</properties>

<dependencies>

    <!-- **********************************************************************
      **                SPRING DEPENDENCIES                                 **
      ********************************************************************** -->

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
        <version>${spring.framework.version}</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-expression</artifactId>
        <version>${spring.framework.version}</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-beans</artifactId>
        <version>${spring.framework.version}</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
        <version>${spring.framework.version}</version>
        <exclusions>
            <exclusion>
                <groupId>commons-logging</groupId>
                <artifactId>commons-logging</artifactId>
            </exclusion>
        </exclusions>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-context-support</artifactId>
        <version>${spring.framework.version}</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
        <version>${spring.framework.version}</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
        <version>${spring.framework.version}</version>
    </dependency>

    <!--javax.servlet-api-->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
        <artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>
        <version>4.0.0</version>
        <!--<scope>runtime</scope>-->
    </dependency>

    <!-- JSP Dependency -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax.servlet.jsp</groupId>
        <artifactId>javax.servlet.jsp-api</artifactId>
        <version>2.3.1</version>
        <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>

    <!-- JSTL Dependency -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax.servlet.jsp.jstl</groupId>
        <artifactId>javax.servlet.jsp.jstl-api</artifactId>
        <version>1.2.1</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>taglibs</groupId>
        <artifactId>standard</artifactId>
        <version>1.1.2</version>
    </dependency>

    <!--javax.xml-->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax.xml.bind</groupId>
        <artifactId>jaxb-api</artifactId>
        <version>2.3.0</version>
    </dependency>    
</dependencies>

The web app is hosted on Apache Tomcat 9.0.4.

Is there a `web.xml` in your project? Could be that you didn't add it but your IDE or build tool did. — M. Deinum, Feb 17 '18 at 14:28
That still doesn't mean that there isn't a `web.xml`. Check the generated artifact. — M. Deinum, Feb 17 '18 at 14:30

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 17 '18 at 14:37

You probably have a (possible empty) web.xml with a version of 2.4 or lower in there. With that version evaluating EL expressions is disabled by default and as such expressions will show up as regular text.

Now you have 2 options either switch to a newer version 2.5

<web-app
        version="3.0"
        xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd">

or remove the web.xml altogether relying only on annotations. Beware that not everything can be configured through annotations as you can in the web.xml or with web-fragment.xml if you need those configuration options (like <distributable />, extensive session configuration etc.) you still need an XML configuration (but just make sure it has a proper version).

Spring MVC 5 & Tomcat 9 - Unable to render the model attribute in the JSP

1 Answers1