Spring MVC Interview Questions with Answers

These Spring MVC interview questions and answers have been written to help you prepare for the interviews and quickly revise the concepts in general. I will strongly suggest you to go deeper into each concept if you have extra time. The more you know, more you are confident.

Table of Contents

What is Spring MVC framework?
What is DispatcherServlet and ContextLoaderListener?
What is the front controller class of Spring MVC?
How to use Java based configuration?
How can we use Spring to create Restful Web Service returning JSON response?
Can we have multiple Spring configuration files?
Difference between <context:annotation-config> vs <context:component-scan>?
Difference between @Component, @Controller, @Repository & @Service annotations?
What does the ViewResolver class?
What is a MultipartResolver and when its used?
How to upload file in Spring MVC Application?
How does Spring MVC provide validation support?
How to validate form data in Spring Web MVC Framework?
What is Spring MVC Interceptor and how to use it?
How to handle exceptions in Spring MVC Framework?
How to achieve localization in Spring MVC applications?
How to get ServletContext and ServletConfig object in a Spring Bean?
How to use Tomcat JNDI DataSource in Spring Web Application?
How would you relate Spring MVC Framework to 3-tier architecture?

What is Spring MVC framework?

The Spring web MVC framework provides model-view-controller architecture and ready components that can be used to develop flexible and loosely coupled web applications. The MVC pattern results in separating the different aspects of the application (input logic, business logic, and UI logic), while providing a loose coupling between model, view and controller parts of application. Spring framework provides lots of advantages over other MVC frameworks e.g.

1. Clear separation of roles – controller, validator, command object, form object, model object, DispatcherServlet, handler mapping, view resolver, etc. Each role can be fulfilled by a specialized object.
2. Powerful and straightforward configuration of both framework and application classes as JavaBeans.
3. Reusable business code – no need for duplication. You can use existing business objects as command or form objects instead of mirroring them in order to extend a particular framework base class.
4. Customizable binding and validation
5. Customizable handler mapping and view resolution
6. Customizable locale and theme resolution
7. A JSP form tag library, introduced in Spring 2.0, that makes writing forms in JSP pages much easier. etc.

What is DispatcherServlet and ContextLoaderListener?

Spring’s web MVC framework is, like many other web MVC frameworks, request-driven, designed around a central Servlet that handles all the HTTP requests and responses. Spring’s DispatcherServlet however, does more than just that. It is completely integrated with the Spring IoC container so it allows you to use every feature that Spring has.

After receiving an HTTP request, DispatcherServlet consults the HandlerMapping (configuration files) to call the appropriate Controller. The Controller takes the request and calls the appropriate service methods and set model data and then returns view name to the DispatcherServlet. The DispatcherServlet will take help from ViewResolver to pickup the defined view for the request. Once view is finalized, The DispatcherServlet passes the model data to the view which is finally rendered on the browser.

<web-app>
  <display-name>Archetype Created Web Application</display-name>
  
  <servlet>
		<servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
			<servlet-class>
				org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet
			</servlet-class>
		<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
	</servlet>

	<servlet-mapping>
		<servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
		<url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
	</servlet-mapping>
	
</web-app>

By default, DispatcherServlet loads its configuration file using <servlet_name>-servlet.xml. E.g. with above web.xml file, DispatcherServlet will try to find spring-servlet.xml file in classpath.

ContextLoaderListener reads the spring configuration file (with value given against “contextConfigLocation” in web.xml), parse it and loads the beans defined in that config file. e.g.

<servlet>
	<servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
	<servlet-class>
		org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet
	</servlet-class>
	
	<init-param>
		<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
		<param-value>/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml</param-value>
	</init-param>
	
	<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

What is the front controller class of Spring MVC?

A front controller is defined as “a controller which handles all requests for a Web Application.” DispatcherServlet (actually a servlet) is the front controller in Spring MVC that intercepts every request and then dispatches/forwards requests to an appropriate controller.

When a web request is sent to a Spring MVC application, dispatcher servlet first receives the request. Then it organizes the different components configured in Spring’s web application context (e.g. actual request handler controller and view resolvers) or annotations present in the controller itself, all needed to handle the request.

How to use Java based configuration?

To configure java based MVC application, first add required dependencies.

<!-- Spring MVC support -->
         
<dependency>
	<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
	<artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
	<version>4.1.4.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>

<dependency>
	<groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
	<artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
	<version>4.1.4.RELEASE</version>
</dependency>
 
<!-- Tag libs support for view layer -->
 
<dependency>
	<groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
	<artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
	<version>1.2</version>
	<scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency>
 
<dependency>
	<groupId>taglibs</groupId>
	<artifactId>standard</artifactId>
	<version>1.1.2</version>
	<scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency>

Now add DispatcherServlet entry in web.xml file so that all incoming requests come though DispatcherServlet only.

<servlet>
	<servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
		<servlet-class>
			org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet
		</servlet-class>
	<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
	<servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
	<url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

Now add below entries in spring configuration file.

<beans>
	<!-- Scan all classes in this path for spring specific annotations -->
    <context:component-scan base-package="com.howtodoinjava.demo" />
 
    <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping" />
    <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter" />
	
    <!-- Vierw resolver configuration -->
    <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
        <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views/" />
        <property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
    </bean>
 
</beans>

Add controller code.

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/employee-module")
public class EmployeeController
{
    @Autowired
    EmployeeManager manager;
 
    @RequestMapping(value = "/getAllEmployees", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public String getAllEmployees(Model model)
    {
        model.addAttribute("employees", manager.getAllEmployees());
        return "employeesListDisplay";
    }
}

Additionally you should add manager and dao layer classes as well. Finally you add the jsp file to display the view.

I will suggest to read above linked tutorial for complete understanding.

Read More : Spring MVC Hello World Example

How can we use Spring to create Restful Web Service returning JSON response?

For adding JSON support to your spring application, you will need to add Jackson dependency in first step.

<!-- Jackson JSON Processor -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackson-databind</artifactId>
    <version>2.4.1</version>
</dependency>

Now you are ready to return JSON response from your MVC controller. All you have to do is return JAXB annotated object from method and use @ResponseBody annotation on this return type.

@Controller
public class EmployeeRESTController
{
	@RequestMapping(value = "/employees")
	public @ResponseBody EmployeeListVO getAllEmployees()
	{
		EmployeeListVO employees = new EmployeeListVO();
		//Add employees
		return employees;
	}
}

Alternatively, you can use @RestController annotation in place of @Controller annotation. This will remove the need to using @ResponseBody.

@RestController = @Controller + @ResponseBody

So you can write the above controller as below.

@RestController
public class EmployeeRESTController
{
	@RequestMapping(value = "/employees")
	public EmployeeListVO getAllEmployees()
	{
		EmployeeListVO employees = new EmployeeListVO();
		//Add employees
		return employees;
	}
}

Read More : Spring REST Hello World JSON Example

Can we have multiple Spring configuration files?

YES. You can have multiple spring context files. There are two ways to make spring read and configure them.

a) Specify all files in web.xml file using contextConfigLocation init parameter.

<servlet>
		<servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
		<servlet-class>
			org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet
		</servlet-class>
		<init-param>
			<param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
			<param-value>
				WEB-INF/spring-dao-hibernate.xml,
				WEB-INF/spring-services.xml,
				WEB-INF/spring-security.xml
			</param-value>
		</init-param>
		<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
	</servlet>

	<servlet-mapping>
		<servlet-name>spring</servlet-name>
		<url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
	</servlet-mapping>

b) OR, you can import them into existing configuration file you have already configured.

<beans>
	<import resource="spring-dao-hibernate.xml"/>
	<import resource="spring-services.xml"/>
	<import resource="spring-security.xml"/>
	
	... //Other configuration stuff

</beans>

Difference between <context:annotation-config> vs <context:component-scan>?

1) First big difference between both tags is that <context:annotation-config> is used to activate applied annotations in already registered beans in application context. Note that it simply does not matter whether bean was registered by which mechanism e.g. using <context:component-scan> or it was defined in application-context.xml file itself.

2) Second difference is driven from first difference itself. It registers the beans defined in config file into context + it also scans the annotations inside beans and activate them. So <context:component-scan> does what <context:annotation-config> does, but additionally it scan the packages and register the beans in application context.

Read More : Difference between annotation-config and component-scan

Difference between @Component, @Controller, @Repository & @Service annotations?

1) The @Component annotation marks a java class as a bean so the component-scanning mechanism of spring can pick it up and pull it into the application context. To use this annotation, apply it over class as below:

@Component
public class EmployeeDAOImpl implements EmployeeDAO {
    ...
}

2) The @Repository annotation is a specialization of the @Component annotation with similar use and functionality. In addition to importing the DAOs into the DI container, it also makes the unchecked exceptions (thrown from DAO methods) eligible for translation into Spring DataAccessException.

3) The @Service annotation is also a specialization of the component annotation. It doesn’t currently provide any additional behavior over the @Component annotation, but it’s a good idea to use @Service over @Component in service-layer classes because it specifies intent better.

4) @Controller annotation marks a class as a Spring Web MVC controller. It too is a @Component specialization, so beans marked with it are automatically imported into the DI container. When you add the @Controller annotation to a class, you can use another annotation i.e. @RequestMapping; to map URLs to instance methods of a class.

Read More : @Component, @Repository, @Service and @Controller Annotations?

What does the ViewResolver class?

ViewResolver is an interface to be implemented by objects that can resolve views by name. There are plenty of ways using which you can resolve view names. These ways are supported by various in-built implementations of this interface. Most commonly used implementation is InternalResourceViewResolver class. It defines prefix and suffix properties to resolve the view component.

<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
	<property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views/" />
	<property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
</bean>

So with above view resolver configuration, if controller method return “login” string, then the “/WEB-INF/views/login.jsp” file will be searched and rendered.

What is a MultipartResolver and when its used?

Spring comes with MultipartResolver to handle file upload in web application. There are two concrete implementations included in Spring:

1. CommonsMultipartResolver for Jakarta Commons FileUpload
2. StandardServletMultipartResolver for Servlet 3.0 Part API

To define an implementation, create a bean with the id “multipartResolver” in a DispatcherServlet’s application context. Such a resolver gets applied to all requests handled by that DispatcherServlet.

If a DispatcherServlet detects a multipart request, it will resolve it via the configured MultipartResolver and pass on a wrapped HttpServletRequest. Controllers can then cast their given request to the MultipartHttpServletRequest interface, which permits access to any MultipartFiles.

How to upload file in Spring MVC Application?

Let’s say we are going to use CommonsMultipartResolver which uses the Apache commons upload library to handle the file upload in a form. So you will need to add the commons-fileupload.jar and commons-io.jar dependencies.

<!-- Apache Commons Upload --> 
<dependency>
	<groupId>commons-fileupload</groupId>
	<artifactId>commons-fileupload</artifactId>
	<version>1.2.2</version>
</dependency>

<!-- Apache Commons Upload --> 
<dependency>
	<groupId>commons-io</groupId>
	<artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
	<version>1.3.2</version>
</dependency>

The following declaration needs to be made in the application context file to enable the MultipartResolver (along with including necessary jar file in the application):

<bean id="multipartResolver" class="org.springframework.web.multipart.commons.CommonsMultipartResolver">
	<!-- one of the properties available; the maximum file size in bytes -->
	<property name="maxUploadSize" value="100000"/>
</bean>

Now create model class FileUploadForm which will hold the multipart data submitted from HTML form.

import org.springframework.web.multipart.MultipartFile;

public class FileUploadForm 
{
	private MultipartFile file;

	public MultipartFile getFile() {
		return file;
	}

	public void setFile(MultipartFile file) {
		this.file = file;
	}
}

Now create FileUploadController class which will actually handle the upload logic.

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ModelAttribute;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;
import org.springframework.web.multipart.MultipartFile;
import com.howtodoinjava.form.FileUploadForm;

@Controller
public class FileUploadController 
{
	@RequestMapping(value = "/upload", method = RequestMethod.POST)
	public String save(@ModelAttribute("uploadForm") FileUploadForm uploadForm,	Model map) {

		MultipartFile multipartFile = uploadForm.getFile();

		String fileName = "default.txt";

		if (multipartFile != null) {
			fileName = multipartFile.getOriginalFilename();
		}
		
		//read and store the file as you like

		map.addAttribute("files", fileName);
		return "file_upload_success";
	}
}

The upload JSP file looks like this:

<%@ taglib prefix="form" uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags/form"%>
<html>
<body>
	<h2>Spring MVC file upload example</h2>
 	<form:form method="post" action="save.html" modelAttribute="uploadForm" enctype="multipart/form-data">
 		Please select a file to upload : <input type="file" name="file" />
		<input type="submit" value="upload" />
		<span><form:errors path="file" cssClass="error" /></span>
	</form:form>
</body>
</html>

How does Spring MVC provide validation support?

Spring supports validations primarily into two ways.

1. Using JSR-303 Annotations and any reference implementation e.g. Hibernate Validator
2. Using custom implementation of org.springframework.validation.Validator interface

In next question, you see an example about how to use validation support in spring MVC application.

How to validate form data in Spring Web MVC Framework?

Spring MVC supports validation by means of a validator object that implements the Validator interface. You need to create a class and implement Validator interface. In this custom validator class, you use utility methods such as rejectIfEmptyOrWhitespace() and rejectIfEmpty() in the ValidationUtils class to validate the required form fields.

@Component
public class EmployeeValidator implements Validator
{
    public boolean supports(Class clazz) {
        return EmployeeVO.class.isAssignableFrom(clazz);
    }
 
    public void validate(Object target, Errors errors)
    {
        ValidationUtils.rejectIfEmptyOrWhitespace(errors, "firstName", "error.firstName", "First name is required.");
        ValidationUtils.rejectIfEmptyOrWhitespace(errors, "lastName", "error.lastName", "Last name is required.");
        ValidationUtils.rejectIfEmptyOrWhitespace(errors, "email", "error.email", "Email is required.");
    }
}

If any of form fields is empty, these methods will create a field error and bind it to the field. The second argument of these methods is the property name, while the third and fourth are the error code and default error message.

To activate this custom validator as a spring managed bean, you need to do one of following things:

1) Add @Component annotation to EmployeeValidator class and activate annotation scanning on the package containing such declarations.

<context:component-scan base-package="com.howtodoinjava.demo" />

2) Alternatively, you can register the validator class bean directly in context file.

<bean id="employeeValidator" class="com.howtodoinjava.demo.validator.EmployeeValidator" />

Read More : Spring MVC Custom Validator and JSR-303 Annotations Examples

What is Spring MVC Interceptor and how to use it?

As you know about servlet filters that they can pre-handle and post-handle every web request they serve — before and after it’s handled by that servlet. In the similar way, you can use HandlerInterceptor interface in your spring mvc application to pre-handle and post-handle web requests that are handled by Spring MVC controllers. These handlers are mostly used to manipulate the model attributes returned/submitted they are passed to the views/controllers.

A handler interceptor can be registered for particular URL mappings, so it only intercepts requests mapped to certain URLs. Each handler interceptor must implement the HandlerInterceptor interface, which contains three callback methods for you to implement: preHandle(), postHandle() and afterCompletion().

Problem with HandlerInterceptor interface is that your new class will have to implement all three methods irrespective of whether it is needed or not. To avoid overriding, you can use HandlerInterceptorAdapter class. This class implements HandlerInterceptor and provide default blank implementations.

Read More : Spring MVC Interceptor Example

How to handle exceptions in Spring MVC Framework?

In a Spring MVC application, you can register one or more exception resolver beans in the web application context to resolve uncaught exceptions. These beans have to implement the HandlerExceptionResolver interface for DispatcherServlet to auto-detect them. Spring MVC comes with a simple exception resolver for you to map each category of exceptions to a view i.e. SimpleMappingExceptionResolver to map each category of exceptions to a view in a configurable way.

Let’s say we have an exception class i.e. AuthException. And we want that everytime this exception is thrown from anywhere into application, we want to show a pre-determined view page /WEB-INF/views/error/authExceptionView.jsp. So the configuration would be.

<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleMappingExceptionResolver">
    <property name="exceptionMappings">
        <props>
            <prop key="com.howtodoinjava.demo.exception.AuthException">
                error/authExceptionView
            </prop>
        </props>
    </property>
    <property name="defaultErrorView" value="error/genericView"/>
</bean>

The “defaultErrorView” property can be configured to show a generic message for all other exceptions which are not configured inside “exceptionMappings” list.

Read More : Spring MVC SimpleMappingExceptionResolver Example

How to achieve localization in Spring MVC applications?

Spring framework is shipped with LocaleResolver to support the internationalization and thus localization as well. To make Spring MVC application supports the internationalization, you will need to register two beans.

1) SessionLocaleResolver : It resolves locales by inspecting a predefined attribute in a user’s session. If the session attribute doesn’t exist, this locale resolver determines the default locale from the accept-language HTTP header.

<bean id="localeResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.SessionLocaleResolver">
    <property name="defaultLocale" value="en" />
</bean>

2) LocaleChangeInterceptor : This interceptor detects if a special parameter is present in the current HTTP request. The parameter name can be customized with the paramName property of this interceptor. If such a parameter is present in the current request, this interceptor changes the user’s locale according to the parameter value.

<bean id="localeChangeInterceptor" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.LocaleChangeInterceptor">
    <property name="paramName" value="lang" />
</bean>

<!-- Enable the interceptor -->
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping">
    <property name="interceptors">
        <list>
            <ref bean="localeChangeInterceptor" />
        </list>
    </property>
</bean>

Next step is to have each locale specific properties file having texts in that locale specific language e.g. messages.properties and messages_zh_CN.properties etc.

Read More : Spring MVC Localization (i10n) Example

How to get ServletContext and ServletConfig object in a Spring Bean?

Simply implement ServletContextAware and ServletConfigAware interfaces and override below methods.

@Controller
@RequestMapping(value = "/magic")
public class SimpleController implements ServletContextAware, ServletConfigAware {

    private ServletContext context;
    private ServletConfig config;

    @Override
    public void setServletConfig(final ServletConfig servletConfig) {
        this.config = servletConfig;

    }

    @Override
    public void setServletContext(final ServletContext servletContext) {
        this.context = servletContext;
    }
	
	//other code
}

How to use Tomcat JNDI DataSource in Spring Web Application?

For using servlet container configured JNDI DataSource, we need to configure it in the spring bean configuration file and then inject it to spring beans as dependencies. Then we can use it with JdbcTemplate to perform database operations.

<bean id="dataSource" class="org.springframework.jndi.JndiObjectFactoryBean">
    <property name="jndiName" value="java:comp/env/jdbc/MySQLDB"/>
</bean>

How would you relate Spring MVC Framework to 3 tier architecture?

3-tier is a Architecture Style and MVC is a Design Pattern.

In larger applications MVC is the presentation tier only of an 3-tier architecture. The models views and controllers are only concerned with the presentation, and make use of a middle tier to populate the models with data from the data tier.

Please share any other good Spring MVC interview questions you may have faced so that I can include that in this post to benefit others as well.

Happy Learning !!