Spring MVC: how to create a default controller for index page?

I had the same problem, even after following Sinhue's setup, but I solved it.

The problem was that that something (Tomcat?) was forwarding from "/" to "/index.jsp" when I had the file index.jsp in my WebContent directory. When I removed that, the request did not get forwarded anymore.

What I did to diagnose the problem was to make a catch-all request handler and printed the servlet path to the console. This showed me that even though the request I was making was for http://localhost/myapp/, the servlet path was being changed to "/index.html". I was expecting it to be "/".

@RequestMapping("*")
public String hello(HttpServletRequest request) {
    System.out.println(request.getServletPath());
    return "hello";
}

So in summary, the steps you need to follow are:

1. In your servlet-mapping use <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
2. In your controller use RequestMapping("/")
3. Get rid of welcome-file-list in web.xml
4. Don't have any files sitting in WebContent that would be considered default pages (index.html, index.jsp, default.html, etc)

Hope this helps.

The redirect is one option. One thing you can try is to create a very simple index page that you place at the root of the WAR which does nothing else but redirecting to your controller like

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

Then you map your controller with that URL with something like

@Controller("loginController")
@RequestMapping(value = "/welcome.html")
public class LoginController{
...
}

Finally, in web.xml, to have your (new) index JSP accessible, declare

<welcome-file-list>
    <welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>

We can simply map a Controller method for the default view. For eg, we have a index.html as the default page.

@RequestMapping(value = "/", method = GET)
public String index() {
    return "index";
}

once done we can access the page with default application context.

E.g http://localhost:8080/myapp

It works for me, but some differences:

• I have no welcome-file-list in web.xml
• I have no @RequestMapping at class level.
• And at method level, just @RequestMapping("/")

I know these are no great differences, but I'm pretty sure (I'm not at work now) this is my configuration and it works with Spring MVC 3.0.5.

One more thing. You don't show your dispatcher configuration in web.xml, but maybe you have some preffix. It has to be something like this:

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>myServletName</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

If this is not your case, you'll need an url-rewrite filter or try the redirect solution.

EDIT: Answering your question, my view resolver configuration is a little different too:

<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
    <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/view/" />
    <property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
</bean>

It can be solved in more simple way: in web.xml

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>*.htm</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>
<welcome-file-list>
    <welcome-file>index.htm</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>

After that use any controllers that your want to process index.htm with @RequestMapping("index.htm"). Or just use index controller

<bean id="urlMapping" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping">
    <property name="mappings">
        <props>
            <prop key="index.htm">indexController</prop>
        </props>
    </property>
<bean name="indexController" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.ParameterizableViewController"
      p:viewName="index" />
</bean>