Executive Summary
Application presents content to users in numerous pages containing
various data. Also, the engineering team responsible for designing,
implementing, and maintaining the application is composed of
individuals with different skill sets.
One of the major concerns with the web applications is the separation
between the logics that deal with Presentation itself, the data to be
presented and the one that controls flow of logic. It is as an answer
to such concerns that the Model-View-Controller or MVC pattern was
designed.
This paper provides the solution to modularize the user interface
functionality of a Web application so that individual parts can be
easily modified, that is model view controller framework.
Introduction
The Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern separates the modeling of the
domain, the presentation, and the actions based on user input into
three separate classes.
Model: The model manages the behavior and data of the application
domain, responds to requests for information about its state (usually
from the view), and responds to instructions to change state (usually
from the controller).
View: The view manages the display of information.
Controller: The controller interprets the mouse and keyboard inputs
from the user, informing the model and/or the view to change as
appropriate.
It is important to note that both the view and the controller depend on
the model. However, the model depends on neither the view nor the
controller. This is one the key benefits of the separation. This
separation allows the model to be built and tested independent of the
visual presentation. The separation between view and controller is
secondary in many rich-client applications, and, in fact, many user
interface frameworks implement the roles as one object. In Web
applications, on the other hand, the separation between view (the
browser) and controller (the server-side components handling the HTTP
request) is very well defined.
The solution provided in this paper is used very simple servlet and JSP
and plain java objects, using this framework very easily any real time
applications can be developed. By following this simple framework most
of the complex MVC frameworks can be understood.
Model View Controller Types
MVC Type-I: In this type of implementation, the View and the Controller
exist as one entity -- the View-Controller. In terms of implementation,
in the Page Centric approach the Controller logic is implemented within
the View i.e. with J2EE, it is JSP. All the tasks of the Controller,
such as extracting HTTP request parameters, call the business logic
(implemented in JavaBeans, if not directly in the JSP), and handling of
the HTTP session is embedded within JSP using scriptlets and JSP action
tags.
MVC Type-II: The problem with Type-I is its lack of maintainability.
With Controller logic embedded within the JSP using scriptlets, the
code can get out of hand very easily. So to overcome the problems of
maintainability and reusability, the Controller logic can be moved into
a servlet and the JSP can be used for what it is meant to be -- the
View component. Hence, by embedding Controller logic within a servlet,
the MVC Type-II Design Pattern can be implemented.
The major difference between MVC Type-I and Type-II is where the
Controller logic is embedded in JSP in Type-I and in Type-II its moved
to servlet.
MVC Type-II Framework
In this frame work, Model is a plain old java object, view is a JSP
which will render the page using the model , these two are application
dependent and this framework has a centralized controller is a servlet,
which will populate the model and invokes a method from the action
class.
Below is the source of the controller.
SimpleController.java
package simple;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.lang.reflect.Method;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
public class SimpleController extends HttpServlet {
private ActionBeanMapping mapping;
public void doGet(HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response)
throws ServletException, IOException {
try {
String strJsp = null;
String strURI = request.getRequestURI();
int startIndex = strURI.lastIndexOf("/");
int endIndex=strURI.lastIndexOf(".do");
String strAction =
strURI.substring(startIndex+1, endIndex);
this.populateBean(request, strAction);
SimpleHandler handler =
(SimpleHandler)mapping.getActionInstance(strAction);
strJsp = handler.process(request, response);
request.getRequestDispatcher(strJsp).forward(request, response);
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
request.getRequestDispatcher("/error.jsp").forward(request, response);
}
}
public void doPost(HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response)
throws ServletException, IOException {
this.doGet(request, response);
}
public void init() throws ServletException {
String strFile = this.getServletContext().getRealPath("/")+
this.getServletConfig().getInitParameter("actionmappings");
System.out.println("MAPPING FILE PATH::"+strFile);
try {
mapping = new ActionBeanMapping(strFile);
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
private void populateBean(HttpServletRequest request, String strAction)
{
Object obj;
try {
obj = mapping.getBeanInstance(strAction);
Method methods[] = obj.getClass().getMethods();
for(int i=0; i0){
strValue = arrayValue[0];
}
try {
method.invoke(obj, strValue);
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
request.setAttribute(SimpleHandler.BEAN, obj);
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
The servlet’s init method is used to initialize the action and bean mappings.
public void init() throws ServletException {
String strFile = this.getServletContext().getRealPath("/")+
this.getServletConfig().getInitParameter("actionmappings");
System.out.println("MAPPING FILE PATH::"+strFile);
try {
mapping = new ActionBeanMapping(strFile);
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
Mapping file path is taken from the servlet config, and initialized the ActionBeanMapping helper class.
ActionBeanMapping.java:
package simple;
import java.io.FileInputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Properties;
public class ActionBeanMapping {
private Properties prop = new Properties();
public ActionBeanMapping(String propFile) throws IOException {
this.prop.load(new FileInputStream(propFile));
}
public Object getActionInstance(String action)throws Exception {
String strClass = prop.getProperty("action."+action.trim());
if(strClass == null)
throw new NullPointerException("Null action::"+action);
return Class.forName(strClass).newInstance();
}
public Object getBeanInstance(String action)throws Exception {
String strClass = prop.getProperty("bean."+action);
if(strClass == null) throw
new NullPointerException("Null bean::"+action);
return Class.forName(strClass).newInstance();
}
}
This class reads the properties file and provides two methods to
instantiate the Action and Bean classes using java reflection for the
specified user action.
The GET and POST methods of the request calls the following code in controller.
try {
String strJsp = null;
String strURI = request.getRequestURI();
int startIndex = strURI.lastIndexOf("/");
int endIndex=strURI.lastIndexOf(".do");
String strAction =
strURI.substring(startIndex+1, endIndex);
this.populateBean(request, strAction);
SimpleHandler handler =
(SimpleHandler)mapping.getActionInstance(strAction);
strJsp = handler.process(request, response);
request.getRequestDispatcher(strJsp).forward(request, response);
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
request.getRequestDispatcher("/error.jsp").forward(request, response);
}
This piece of code gets the user action from the URI and instantiates
the bean and action class and populates the model and invokes the
method on an action class. All the actions classes in the application
should implement the interface SimpleHandler. If any error occurs this
controller forwards to a generalized error page.
SimpleHandler.java:
package simple;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
public interface SimpleHandler {
public static final String BEAN = "simple.BEAN";
public String process(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception;
}
All the action classes in the application should implement the process method.
Population of model data from the request object is done by the following controller method.
private void populateBean(HttpServletRequest request, String strAction)
{
Object obj;
try {
obj = mapping.getBeanInstance(strAction);
Method methods[] = obj.getClass().getMethods();
for(int i=0; i0){
strValue = arrayValue[0];
}
try {
method.invoke(obj, strValue);
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
request.setAttribute(SimpleHandler.BEAN, obj);
} catch (Exception e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
This method populates the model data and binds the model to request object, this model is accessed by the action class and JSP.
error.jsp
[%@ page language="java" pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%]
[html]
[head]
[title]Error page[/title]
[/head]
[body]
[font color="#ff0000"][b]Error occured while processing request.[/b][/font]
[/body]
[/html]
The web configuration is defined below, it’s a simple configuration file for controller.
web.xml:
[?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?]
[web-app version="2.4"
xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd"]
[servlet]
[description]Simple J2EE Controller[/description]
[display-name]Simple J2EE Controller[/display-name]
[servlet-name]SimpleController[/servlet-name]
[servlet-class]simple.SimpleController[/servlet-class]
[init-param]
[param-name]actionmappings[/param-name]
[param-value]WEB-INF/actionmappings.properties[/param-value]
[/init-param]
[load-on-startup]1[/load-on-startup]
[/servlet]
[servlet-mapping]
[servlet-name]SimpleController[/servlet-name]
[url-pattern]*.do[/url-pattern]
[/servlet-mapping]
[welcome-file-list]
[welcome-file]index.jsp[/welcome-file]
[/welcome-file-list]
[/web-app]
The controller servlet is invoked for all the urls which will ends with
.do, this servlet loads on server startup, and defines the action
mappings file path.
Sample Application using the Framework
Providing sample application to registration to store name, email and phone.
index.jsp:
[%@ page language="java" pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%]
[html]
[head]
[title]Home page[/title]
[/head]
[body]
[form method="post" action="register.do"]
[table width="200" border="0" align="center"]
[tr]
[td colspan=2 align="center"][strong]User Data[/strong] [/td][/tr]
[tr]
[td]Name[/td]
[td][input type="text" name="name"][/td][/tr]
[tr]
[td align="left"]Email[/td]
[td][input type="text" name="email"][/td][/tr]
[tr]
[td align="center"] Phone[/td]
[td][input type="text" name="phone"][/td][/tr]
[tr]
[td colspan="2" align="center"] [input type="submit" value="Submit" name="Submit"][/td][/tr]
[/table]
[/form]
[/body]
[/html]
This is a JSP page to enter the data by the user to store in the
system. When user clicks the Submit button on the page data is posted
to the action register.
Bean and Action mappings are entered into the mappings file.
actionmappings.properties
action.register=simple.RegistrationHandler
bean.register=simple.User
all the user actions from the view should present in this properties file.
When user submits the data to controller it populates the data to the following model.
User.java:
package simple;
public class User {
private String name;
private String email;
private String phone;
public String getEmail() {
return email;
}
public void setEmail(String email) {
this.email = email;
}
public String getName() {
return name;
}
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
public String getPhone() {
return phone;
}
public void setPhone(String phone) {
this.phone = phone;
}
}
Following action is called when data is submitted.
package simple;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
public class RegistrationHandler implements SimpleHandler {
public String process(HttpServletRequest request,
HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
User user = (User)request.getAttribute(SimpleHandler.BEAN);
return "/success.jsp";
}
}
This action class gets the bean from the request; this bean can be
saved in the system, after successful processing it returns the
success.jsp to controller to forward to this view.
success.jsp:
[%@ page language="java" import="simple.*" pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%]
[%
User user = (User) request.getAttribute(SimpleHandler.BEAN);
%]
[html]
[head]
[title]Success page[/title]
[/head]
[body]
[table width="200" border="0" align="center"]
[tr]
[td colspan=2 align="center"][strong]User Data Successfully Saved[/strong] [/td][/tr]
[tr]
[td]Name[/td]
[td][%= user.getName() %][/td][/tr]
[tr]
[td align="left"]Email[/td]
[td][%= user.getEmail() %][/td][/tr]
[tr]
[td align="center"] Phone[/td]
[td][%= user.getPhone() %][/td][/tr]
[tr]
[td colspan="2" align="center"] [input type="button" va
About the author:
Madhusudan Pagadala is working as a Senior Software
Engineer at NetZero,UnitedOnline, Inc., located in
WoodlandHills,California,USA. He has 9+ years experience in Web
Technologies like J2EE, HTML, and JavaScript. He pursued Master
of Technology in AeroSpace Engineering from the prestigious
college IIT, Kharagpur-India.
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