Spring MVC with Spring Webflow

Question

I am trying to use Spring Webflow with my Spring MVC application.I had a look at the booking-mvc example and followed it,but most of the examples on the web are done with Tiles.I Hope that i am not completely wrong in my understanding and that Spring Webflow can be used with Spring MVC

I am trying to use Spring MVC controllers.But when i am doing a transition like submit/finish nothing seems to happen.

Here is my Flow xml:

<view-state id="enterBookingDetails">
        <transition on="submit" to="reviewBooking" />
    </view-state>

    <view-state id="reviewBooking">
        <transition on="confirm" to="bookingConfirmed" />
        <transition on="revise" to="enterBookingDetails" />
        <transition on="cancel" to="bookingCancelled" />
    </view-state>

I Have enterBookingDetails and reviewBooking defined as controllers :

@RequestMapping(value = "/enterBookingDetails", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public ModelAndView getPage(final HttpServletRequest request) {
        ModelAndView modelView = new ModelAndView();
        modelView.setViewName("pa");
        return modelView;
    }

    @RequestMapping(value = "/reviewBooking", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public ModelAndView getPage2(final HttpServletRequest request) {

        ModelAndView modelView = new ModelAndView();
        modelView.setViewName("pb");
        return modelView;
    }

My Jsp looks like this :

<form:form>
    <input type="hidden" name="_flowExecutionKey" value="${flowExecutionKey}" />
    <input type="hidden" name="_eventId" value="finished" />
    <input type="submit" value="Submit" name="_eventId_finished" />
</form:form>

And finally my configuration :

<bean
        class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver" id="mvcViewResolver">
        <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/" />
        <property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
        <property name="order" value="1" />

    </bean>

        <!-- Register all Web Flow definitions under /WEB-INF/flows/**/*-flow.xml -->
    <webflow:flow-registry id="flowRegistry"
        base-path="/WEB-INF/flows" flow-builder-services="flowBuilderServices">
        <webflow:flow-location-pattern value="/**/*-flow.xml" />
    </webflow:flow-registry>

    <!-- Deploy a flow executor -->
    <webflow:flow-executor id="flowExecutor" />

    <!-- Configure flow builder services -->
    <!-- Configure view service -->
    <webflow:flow-builder-services id="flowBuilderServices"
        view-factory-creator="mvcViewFactoryCreator" />
    <!-- Web Flow components -->
    <!-- Install flow handler (FlowHandlerAdapter) -->
    <!-- It dispatches URL requests to flows -->
    <bean class="org.springframework.webflow.mvc.servlet.FlowHandlerAdapter">
        <property name="flowExecutor" ref="flowExecutor" />
    </bean>

    <!-- Map Http request path to flows register in the registry -->
    <bean class="org.springframework.webflow.mvc.servlet.FlowHandlerMapping">
        <property name="flowRegistry" ref="flowRegistry" />
        <property name="order" value="0" />
    </bean>
    <bean id="mvcViewFactoryCreator"
       class="org.springframework.webflow.mvc.builder.MvcViewFactoryCreator">
       <property name="viewResolvers" ref="mvcViewResolver"/>
    </bean>

Answer 1

Spring Webflow is built on spring web mvc, so the two can be used together.

I have learned that the problem with this combination is that when there is something misconfigured, the only symptom is "nothing happens". I ultimately ended up looking at the debug logs for org.springframework.web and org.springframework.webflow, then tracing into the spring source code to diagnose configuration issues.

The spring paradigm is aiming towards "convention over configuration". The problem I have had with it is that the conventions are not always well defined in a manner that someone already familiar with them can easily grasp.

The final "gotcha" that I had to resolve is that the convention for spring webflow is to put the flow xml files in the same folder as the jsp's.

In your example, you appear to be planning to switch between spring-webflow and unadorned web mvc behind the same view. Provided everything is correctly configured, for a given uri, whatever is in the webflow registry will trump whatever is in the UrlHandlerMapping (your annotations). This can create confusion if you're not aware of it.