What is the front controller class of Spring MVC?
In Spring MVC, the front controller class is DispatcherServlet
. The DispatcherServlet
acts as the central dispatcher for HTTP requests and is responsible for routing requests to the appropriate handlers (controllers) based on the URL patterns defined in the application.
When a request is made to a Spring MVC application, the DispatcherServlet
intercepts the request and delegates it to the appropriate controller. It also handles the response by rendering the view (e.g., JSP, Thymeleaf) and returning it to the client.
To configure the DispatcherServlet
, you typically define it in the web.xml
file or use Java-based configuration with @ServletComponentScan
or @EnableWebMvc
annotations in a configuration class.
Here’s a simple example of how you might configure the DispatcherServlet
in web.xml
:
<servlet>
<servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
In this configuration, the DispatcherServlet
will handle all incoming requests to the application.