Spring Boot and JSP Tutorial with Examples

Objective of Post
Create a Spring Boot project
Configure pom.xml
Configure JSP View
Controller & JSP
Run the application

1. Objective of Post

Spring is a famous framework because it supports a lot of technologies for View layer. The technologies supported for the View layer by the Spring are JSP, Thymeleaf, Freemarker, ...
Because of the simplicity of Thymeleaf, it is considered as the default technology used for the View layer, and is automatically configured by the Spring Boot . Therefore, if you choose the JSP for the View layer, you need to configure it.

In this post, I will show you how to create a Web application with the Spring Boot and use the JSP to display data. The contents will be mentioned in this post:

Configure to use the JSP for the View Layer
Explain the operating principle of Controller & JSP.

2. Create a Spring Boot project

On the Eclipse, create a Spring Boot project.

Enter:

Name: SpringBootJSP
Group: org.o7planning.org
Description: Spring Boot + JSP
Package: org.o7planning.sbjsp

Select the technologies and libraries to be used:

OK, the Project has been created.

SpringBootJspApplication.java

package org.o7planning.sbjsp;

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;

@SpringBootApplication
public class SpringBootJspApplication {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(SpringBootJspApplication.class, args);
    }
}

3. Configure pom.xml

Configure the libraries necessary for JSP/Servlet in the pom.xml file:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
    <artifactId>tomcat-embed-jasper</artifactId>
</dependency>

<dependency>
    <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
    <artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
</dependency>

The full contents of pom.xml file:

pom.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0
        http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
        
    <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

    <groupId>org.o7planning</groupId>
    <artifactId>SpringBootJSP</artifactId>
    <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
    <packaging>jar</packaging>

    <name>SpringBootJSP</name>
    <description>Spring Boot + JSP</description>

    <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>2.0.0.RELEASE</version>
        <relativePath /> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
    </parent>

    <properties>
        <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
        <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
        <java.version>1.8</java.version>
    </properties>

    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
            <artifactId>tomcat-embed-jasper</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
            <artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
        </dependency>

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
            <scope>test</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>

    <build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin>
                <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </build>

</project>

4. Configure JSP View

In the src/main directory, create a webapp/WEB-INF/jsp subdirectory, your JSP files will be placed into this directory.

In the next step, you need to configure to tell the Spring Boot the place where you will put JSP files. OK, Open the application.propertiesfile and add the following properties:

application.properties

# =============================================
# VIEW RESOLVER
# =============================================

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

5. Controller & JSP

The relationship between the Controller and the View is explained in the figure:

Person.java

package org.o7planning.sbjsp.model;

public class Person {

    private String firstName;
    private String lastName;

    public Person() {

    }

    public Person(String firstName, String lastName) {
        this.firstName = firstName;
        this.lastName = lastName;
    }

    public String getFirstName() {
        return firstName;
    }

    public void setFirstName(String firstName) {
        this.firstName = firstName;
    }

    public String getLastName() {
        return lastName;
    }

    public void setLastName(String lastName) {
        this.lastName = lastName;
    }

}

MainController.java

package org.o7planning.sbjsp.controller;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import org.o7planning.sbjsp.model.Person;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;

@Controller
public class MainController {

    private static List<Person> persons = new ArrayList<Person>();

    static {
        persons.add(new Person("Bill", "Gates"));
        persons.add(new Person("Steve", "Jobs"));
    }

    @RequestMapping(value = { "/", "/index" }, method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public String index(Model model) {

        String message = "Hello Spring Boot + JSP";

        model.addAttribute("message", message);

        return "index";
    }

    @RequestMapping(value = { "/personList" }, method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public String viewPersonList(Model model) {

        model.addAttribute("persons", persons);

        return "personList";
    }

}

index.jsp

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
   <head>
      <meta charset="UTF-8" />
      <title>Welcome</title>
      <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
                href="${pageContext.request.contextPath}/css/style.css"/>
   </head>
   <body>
      <h1>Welcome</h1>
      <h2>${message}</h2>
      
    
        
      <a href="${pageContext.request.contextPath}/personList">Person List</a>  
      
   </body>
  
</html>

personList.jsp

<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" prefix="c"%>

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
<html>
  <head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8" />
    <title>Person List</title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="${pageContext.request.contextPath}/css/style.css"/>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Person List</h1>
   
    <br/><br/>
    <div>
      <table border="1">
        <tr>
          <th>First Name</th>
          <th>Last Name</th>
        </tr>
        <c:forEach  items="${persons}" var ="person">
        <tr>
          <td>${person.firstName}</td>
          <td>${person.lastName}</td>
        </tr>
        </c:forEach>
      </table>
    </div>
  </body>
 
</html>

6. Run the application

On the Eclipse, right click on the project, select:

Run As/Spring Boot App

http://localhost:8080