Summary: Introduction to Spring MVC
- Web Applications:
- Web applications are crucial in the digital landscape, facilitating user interaction through HTTP.
- They cover various domains such as e-commerce, social media, online banking, and content management.
- Their versatility allows the presentation layer to be ported to native mobile and desktop apps, making them a popular choice for full-stack enterprise applications.
- The development of robust, secure, and maintainable web applications is a top priority for developers.
- Spring Web:
- Spring Web is a vital component of the Spring Framework, simplifying web development.
- It abstracts and simplifies the usage of servlets, and provides tools for testing and mocking, making it easier to write unit and integration tests for web components.
- Spring Boot Starter Web:
- Spring Boot Starter Web supercharges Spring Web development by offering Spring Boot autoconfiguration, automatically including Spring Web MVC, and including an embedded Tomcat container.
- This integrated setup eliminates the need to install and run an external Tomcat server separately, enhancing development efficiency.
- The Model-View-Controller (MVC) Pattern:
- The MVC pattern is a widely used design pattern that separates applications into three interconnected components: Model, View, and Controller.
- The Model is responsible for data and business logic, the View presents data to users, and the Controller handles user input, processes requests, and controls the application flow.
- This separation of concerns makes code more organised and easier to maintain.
- Each component can be reused, promoting code reusability.
- Additionally, components can be tested independently, ensuring the application’s reliability.
- The modular architecture allows for scalability and the addition of new features without impacting existing functionality.
- Flexibility is also a key advantage, as changes to one component do not affect the others.
- Spring MVC:
- Spring Web MVC, a part of Spring Boot Starter Web, extends Spring Web by supporting the MVC pattern.
- It efficiently handles HTTP requests and responses, ensuring data retrieval, processing, and presentation in web applications.
- Spring MVC architecture involves the
DispatcherServlet, Handler Mapping, Controller, View Resolver, and View. - This approach provides an organised and efficient way to build web applications using the MVC pattern, separating concerns and promoting code maintainability.