Having issue displaying JSP page in Spring-MVC

Question

I am having issue to display jsp page in Spring-MVC. This is a basic hello world Spring-MVC with Gradle and IntelliJ CE:

I get the following error page:

Here is my build.gradle:

buildscript {
    repositories {
        mavenCentral()
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-gradle-plugin:2.0.5.RELEASE")
    }
}


plugins {
    id 'java'
}

group 'com.helloct'
version '1.0-SNAPSHOT'

sourceCompatibility = 1.8

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}
apply plugin: 'java'
apply plugin: 'idea'
apply plugin: 'org.springframework.boot'
apply plugin: 'io.spring.dependency-management'

bootJar {
    baseName = 'gs-serving-web-content'
    version =  '0.1.0'
}

dependencies {
    testCompile group: 'junit', name: 'junit', version: '4.12'    

    compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web")
    compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf")
    compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-devtools")

    compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter")
    compile("org.springframework:spring-jdbc")
    compile("com.h2database:h2")

    compile("com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-databind")

    compile('javax.servlet:jstl')
    compile('org.apache.tomcat.embed:tomcat-embed-jasper')    

    compile 'javax.servlet.jsp:javax.servlet.jsp-api'        

    testCompile("junit:junit")
}

the The view resolver file:

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "hello")
public class WebConfig implements WebMvcConfigurer {

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

The controller page:

@Controller
public class JSPController {
    @GetMapping("/jspPage")
    public String home(){
        return "jspPage";
    }
}

The jsp page location:

Content of the application.properties file:

spring.mvc.view.prefix=/WEB-INF/views/
spring.mvc.view.suffix=.jsp

Using the default template engine, the page displays correctly but using jsp, it doesn't work

Log error:

https://hastebin.com/lijekesoti.apache

NOTE: I know Thymleleaf is the recommanded template for Spring but I want work with JSP for some reason

---

UPDATE

After reading this post with the help of paulsm4 answer, removing the following line:

compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf")

and removing the view resolver file solved my issue.

Answer 1

It turns out that it's non-trivial to get JSPs to work with Spring Boot. It also turns out that there are significant changes between Spring Boot 1.x (which most of the tutorials for Spring Boot/JSP were written to) and Spring Boot 2.x.

I found these resources helpful:

• Navin Reddy: Web App Using Spring Boot
• MKYong: Spring Boot Hello World Example – JSP

I got JSP working with both Spring Boot 1.x and 2.x, with both Maven and Gradle. My project is here on GitHub:

• https://github.com/paulsm4/HelloSpringBoot/tree/master/test7

These are the highlights of what I needed to do:

1. I created my starter project with Eclipse STS.

   It was important to specify "War" packaging (vs. the default "Jar")

2. I added the following dependencies in my build.gradle:

   dependencies {
     compile('org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web')
     compile('javax.servlet:jstl')
     compile('javax.servlet:javax.servlet-api')
     compile('org.apache.tomcat.embed:tomcat-embed-jasper')
     compile('org.webjars:bootstrap:4.1.0')
     testImplementation('org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-test')
   

   It turns out that 'tomcat-embedded' need NOT be specified (it's included in spring-boot-starter-web by default).

   But it also turns out that Embedded Tomcat won't process JSPs unless you explicitly include tomcat-embed-jasper.

   Don't specify a "thymeleaf" dependency - it will conflict with "jasper".

3. As per other tutorials, I added these lines in my application.properties:

   spring.mvc.view.prefix: /WEB-INF/jsp/
   spring.mvc.view.suffix: .jsp
   

   I added also added these lines to my root class:

   @SpringBootApplication
   public class Test7Application extends SpringBootServletInitializer {
      ...  
      @Override
      protected SpringApplicationBuilder configure(SpringApplicationBuilder application) {
         return application.sources(Test7Application.class);
      }
   
      public static void main(String[] args) {
         SpringApplication.run(Test7Application.class, args);
      }
   

4. Unfortunately, "other tutorials" frequently say to create folder src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/jsp/. This will NOT work.

   Instead, I put my test.jsp file in folder src/main/resources/META-INF/resources/WEB-INF/jsp.

   These links explain why:

   • Spring Boot JSP 404
   • Why spring boot 1.5.3 jar does not recognise jsp files in src/main/resources/META-INF/resources/

5. At this point, I was successfully able to display both static and .jsp pages with Spring Boot.

I hope that helps!