A fine feature to have no doubt. But for those used to DWR number and date converters are, well, bellow expectations. What about collections, maps, beans? Providing the converter interface and a constructor based approach is not enough IMO. Spring should handle at least JS/JSON objects (and probably XML if a suitable library is in the classpath) and parse them to their Java counterparts out-of-the-box.

Does this release also include data binding support for nested objects including collections and maps (without the need for initializing nested object hierarchy)?

Do you have any examples of converting from String to a nested data structure?
For instance, how would you convert from a String to Map<String,List>, then bind it to a parameter in a Restful service?

Thanks

Hi Keith,

Is the org.springframework.core.convert.support.DefaultConversionService the one used behind mvc namespace? and is it available to other beans if i use the namespace? Thanks.

Regards,
Donny

Hi Keith, Thanks for the reply. Yes I think it would be nice to have these default conversion service and validator accessible through setter injection.

Any plan to add the Jasypt encryptor as part of the default converter, maybe sometime in the future? I know i can add the encryptor easily.. but it would be nicer to see spring mvc to support this naturally… or should it be part of spring security?

Great work, guys. I recently wrote up a blog entry on the new Bean Validation and Portlet MVC features: http://blogs.captechventures.com/blog/andy-pemberton/spring-3-example-portlet-and-overview

In the example code, I actually used the older, 2.5 name spaces. Is the 'new mvc 3 configuration namespace' you mentioned part of RC2?

Andy,

Yes, the new mvc namespace is available as of Spring 3.0.0.RC2.

– Sam

Great stuff! Is it possible to use this in RC3 or do I need to wait for Spring 3 final?

Roel,

> Can you provide the JSP that produces the formatted
> numbers and dates (as in "With the annotation
> overrides, the following is printed for the US and DE
> Locales:"..) ?

In order to take advantage of this annotation-driven formatting support, you can use Spring's "form" tag library (e.g., ) to output the properties of the model object.

– Sam

Is there now a way to declaratively handle date conversion when the date may be an empty string?

Hi, thanks for the post.
As Marc mentioned above, there appears to be an issue binding empty form fields to Date properties in Spring 3. When doing so, an error such as the following is thrown:


org.springframework.validation.BindException: org.springframework.validation.BeanPropertyBindingResult: 5 errors
Field error in object 'shelf' on field 'asset.endOfLifeDate': rejected value []; codes [typeMismatch.shelf.asset.endOfLifeDate,typeMismatch.asset.endOfLifeDate,typeMismatch.endOfLifeDate,typeMismatch.java.util.Date,typeMismatch]; arguments [org.springframework.context.support.DefaultMessageSourceResolvable: codes [shelf.asset.endOfLifeDate,asset.endOfLifeDate]; arguments []; default message [asset.endOfLifeDate]]; default message [Failed to convert property value of type 'java.lang.String' to required type 'java.util.Date' for property 'asset.endOfLifeDate'; nested exception is java.lang.IllegalStateException: Cannot convert value of type to required type for property 'endOfLifeDate': no matching editors or conversion strategy found]


Is there some way to declaratively handle this in Spring 3 or are custom property editors still required for this?

Hello,

We plan to build an application following the architecture in the Hotel Booking sample project (it uses Web Flow 2.0.8 and JSF 1.2). I wonder if we could use this feature in JSF?

Thanks,

-Ha

Michael:

One of this highlights in this article is the JSR303 Bean Validation integration. If you want to use the standard JSR303 features, you'd want to use: javax.validation.constraints.Size (ie: @Size(min=x, max=y)). There is no JSR303 @Length annotation for validation.

Hope this is helpful.

-Andy

Well, this is up for debate, but personally, yes: I'd prefer to use JSR303 Bean Validation annotations alone.

The Bean Validation @Size annotation can be used on:
* String (string length is evaluated)
* Collection (collection size is evaluated)
* Map (map size is evaluated)
* Array (array length is evaluated)

To your last question, yes. Specifically, you can use the new @Valid annotation (which is essentially like the older @ModelAttribute annotation, plus adding in validation to the binding lifecycle. This will add BindingResult errors which would then be displayed in spring form:errors tag(s).

I actually added a Maven-Eclipse project example with this code and dependencies worked out to a blog entry I wrote: http://blogs.captechventures.com/blog/andy-pemberton/spring-3-example-portlet-and-overview

I look around, read the spring documentation and fail in every part…
do you got an simple small project or something like that

——–
package de.kit.ksm.kalibweb.formatter;

import java.lang.annotation.ElementType;
import java.lang.annotation.Retention;
import java.lang.annotation.RetentionPolicy;
import java.lang.annotation.Target;

@Target({ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.FIELD, ElementType.PARAMETER})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface WebDateFormat {

}

——-

package de.kit.ksm.kalibweb.formatter;

import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.HashSet;
import java.util.Set;

import org.apache.commons.logging.Log;
import org.apache.commons.logging.LogFactory;
import org.springframework.format.AnnotationFormatterFactory;
import org.springframework.format.Parser;
import org.springframework.format.Printer;

public final class WebDateFormatAnnotationFormatterFactory implements
AnnotationFormatterFactory {

Log log = LogFactory.getLog(getClass().getName());

private final Set<Class> fieldType;

public WebDateFormatAnnotationFormatterFactory() {
Set<Class> rawFieldTypes = new HashSet<Class>(1);
rawFieldTypes.add(Date.class);
log.debug("init");
this.fieldType = Collections.unmodifiableSet(rawFieldTypes);
}

@Override
public Set<Class> getFieldTypes() {
log.debug("set fieldtypes");
return this.fieldType;
}

@Override
public Parser getParser(WebDateFormat arannotation, Class fieldType) {
log.debug("get parser");
return new WebDateFormatter();
}

@Override
public Printer getPrinter(WebDateFormat annotation, Class fieldType) {
log.debug("get printer");
return new WebDateFormatter();
}

}
—-
package de.kit.ksm.kalibweb.formatter;

import org.springframework.format.FormatterRegistry;
import org.springframework.format.support.FormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean;

public class WebDateFormatFormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean extends FormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean
{

@Override
protected void installFormatters(FormatterRegistry registry) {
super.installFormatters(registry);

registry.addFormatterForFieldAnnotation(new WebDateFormatAnnotationFormatterFactory());

}

}
——-
xml setup seams to be ok…but no go with annotation @WebDateFormat

Keith, is it possible to configure the Joda Time parser globally, to parse all the dates in common format? There is no documentation on it. I'd like to have it configured so that it parses all dates and times in valid ISO format (org.joda.time.format.ISODateTimeFormat.dateTimeParser() | dateParser() | dateOptionalTimeParser() | timeParser()). I was able to write my own converter to do it, but if Spring has JodaTime support built-in, than I'd expect to be able to do it without writing any code.

Thanks for the constructive feedback regarding the Overworld limitations and linearity, I only felt it limited in the sense that you aren't truely able to 'explore' fully in the way that could in other Zelda games – remember the underground caverns you could once find? – and quite frankly I miss that and it is basically linear in the sense that your destination is already chosen, yes you are still exploring and in a wonderful new way but this Overworld 'Transport' also highlights the limitations of what Nintendo can do with a 3D Zelda game on the DS but what they 'have' achieved is still impressive and I do acknowledge that fully.

Hi, I was trying to implement custom Formatter. I have registered it using formatterRegistry.addFormatterForFieldType(). Unfortunately the formatter is not called for data binding. In Spring Docs 3.0.4 chapter 5.6.3 FormatterRegistry SPI it says: "Because this implemementation also implements ConversionService, it can be directly configured for use with Spring's DataBinder and the Spring Expression Language (SpEL)." This hints to me that some additional step might be required. Unfortunately there is no documentation example how to do that. How do you configure DataBinder to use the FormattingConversionService? Actually there is also no example how to configure DataBinder with any ConversionService.

Thanks, sometimes one is blind. I had the present, but the conversion-service="conversionService" attribute was missing.

Keith,

As you do,but url cannot be parsed!But while I exchange Date for String,everything is normal,why?
Thanks!

@RequestMapping(value = "/appointments/{day}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public String getAppointmentsForDay(@PathVariable @DateTimeFormat(iso=ISO.DATE) Date day) {
…
}

Keith,

Thanks for the article, it is enlightening.

I do not know the @Mask annotation, can you refer me to some documentation?

Thanks,
Claudia