Template – HTML5 BoilerPlate with Spring MVC & GAE

This article provides instructions on how to create your quick Google App Engine (GAE) based web application project using Eclipse IDE, based on Spring MVC and HTML5Boilerplate (or Initializr) HTML project templates. Note that this is my personal way to get started quickly with any GAE-based web projects within 5 minutes or so and upload the same on Google cloud. Please feel free to comment/suggest if I missed to mention one or more important points. Also, sorry for the typos.

Following are key points described later in this article:

• Create HTML template projects using Initializr
• Create Google App Engine/Spring MVC template project
• Create Google Web Application project & Import Files

Create HTML template projects using Initializr

Recently, I found an online web project, Initializr which is very useful to quickly download a template HTML project of the following types and, get started with a static web project within minutes.

• HTML5 Boilerplate
• Responsive
• Bootstrap

All that one need to do is go to Initializr.com, select a template type and download the HTML template project. In fact, the Initialzr project (GAE based) itself is an open-source and could be downloaded from GitHub. I downloaded it and ran locally on my laptop. I was able to create the template project locally, without going to Initializr.com.

Create Google App Engine/Spring MVC template project

Create a GAE/Spring MVC template consisting of folders and files that could be imported into new GAE web application project. Note that this is a one-time activity. This project is primarily a folder consisting of following two folders with below-mentioned files:

• src folder: Create a package com.vflux.core (com/vflux/core) within src folder and place an HelloController.java file within it. Following is the source code for the file:

  package com.vflux.core;
  
  import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
  import org.springframework.ui.ModelMap;
  import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
  import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;
  import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView;
  
  @Controller
  public class HelloController {
   
   @RequestMapping(value = "/", method = RequestMethod.GET)
   public ModelAndView index( ModelMap model ) {
    return new ModelAndView("index");
   } 
  }
  

• war folder: Create a WEB-INF folder within and place following as files/folders within. Note that these folders & files shall be imported into GAE project while working from eclipse IDE.
  • lib: Place Spring MVC related libraries along with any related libraries
  • views: index.jsp file will go within this folder. Note that index.jsp is the index.html file that gets created as part of Initializr.
  • spring-servlet.xml: Following is the content of the file:

    <beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
     xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
     xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
     xmlns:tx="http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx"
     xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
     xsi:schemaLocation="
      http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-4.0.xsd
            http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-4.0.xsd        
            http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-4.0.xsd
            http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx http://www.springframework.org/schema/tx/spring-tx-4.0.xsd
      http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop http://www.springframework.org/schema/aop/spring-aop-4.0.xsd">
    
     
     <context:component-scan base-package="com.vflux.core" /> 
     <mvc:annotation-driven />
     <!--  Configuration defining views files -->
     
     <bean
      class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
      <property name="prefix">
       <value>/WEB-INF/views/</value>
      </property>
      <property name="suffix">
       <value>.jsp</value>
      </property>
     </bean> 
    </beans>
    

  • web.xml whose content goes like following:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
    <web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
             xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee 
                  http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd"
             version="2.5"
             xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee">
      
      <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>
     <context-param>
      <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
      <param-value>
       /WEB-INF/spring-servlet.xml
      </param-value>
     </context-param>
     <listener>
      <listener-class>
       org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener
      </listener-class>
     </listener>
      
      <!-- Default page to serve -->
      <welcome-file-list>
        <welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
      </welcome-file-list>
    
    </web-app>
    

Create Google Web Application project & Import Files

These step need to be done for every new project.

• Create a Google Web Application project within Eclipse IDE. This would create folders such as src, war, war/WEB-INF etc.
• Create a “views” folder within “war/WEB-INF”. This folder would consist of index.jsp. Note that the index.jsp file is actually index.html (renamed as index.jsp) created as part of HTML template project.
• Click on “war” folder and import all folders and files created/downloaded as HTML template project from Initializr.com. It imports folders such as css, js, img, fonts (optionally) and files such as robots.txt, favicon.ico, index.html etc. Rename index.html as index.jsp and move it into “war/WEB-INF/views” folder.
• Click on “war/WEB-INF/lib” folder and import Spring libraries that you stored as part of GAE template project described above under the section, Create Google App Engine/Spring MVC template project.
• Create a package com.vflux.core within “src” folder and import HelloController.java that you created as part of GAE template project described above under the section, Create Google App Engine/Spring MVC template project.

That is it! Once done with above, go ahead and right-click on the project and click on “Run as/Web Application”