Delete controller is not working

Question

I'm really getting started with controllers for my small application, and i have this for now:

@RequestMapping("/users/{id}")
public ModelAndView showMemeber(@PathVariable Integer id) {

    ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView("user/show");

    mav.addObject("title", "Show User");
    mav.addObject("user", userService.findById(id));
    return mav;

}

@RequestMapping(value="/users/{id}", method=RequestMethod.DELETE)
public String deleteMemeber(@PathVariable Integer id) {

    userService.delete(id);

    return "redirect:users";

}

the first one, is working properly, but the second doesn't, i have the following view for the first controller:

<div class="panel-heading">Personal information</div>
<div class="panel-body">

  <form method="post">

    ...

    <button type="submit" class="btn btn-primary"><span class="glyphicon glyphicon-pencil"></span> Edit</button>
    <button type="submit" class="btn btn-danger" onclick="return confirm('Are you sure you want to delete {{ user.username }}?')"><span class="glyphicon glyphicon-remove"></span> Delete</button>
  </form> 
</div>

like you see, i have two buttons here, one for edit the object and one for delete it. Once deleted it, must redirect to https://<my domain>/users .

The problem is, when i click on Delete it just refresh the page and the object persist on the database, what is wrong here?

• I try send a DELETE request like curl -X "DELETE" http://localhost:8080/my-app/users/18 but this didn't work.

Answer 1

There are a bunch of methods available when communicating over HTTP. The most common ones are GET, PUT, POST and DELETE.

In your controller you declare that you expect a DELETE-request:

@RequestMapping(value="/users/{id}", method=RequestMethod.DELETE)
public String deleteMemeber(@PathVariable Integer id) {...}

This is not supported by the browser by default - a browser only supports POST and GET. In order to send a DELETE-request from the browser you must use JavaScript.

One alternative is to use eg jQuery's ajax-method

$.ajax({
    url: '/users/' + someUserId,
    type: 'DELETE',
    success: function(result) {
        // Do something with the result
    }
});

One way of testing DELETE-requests is to use the command cUrl:

curl -X DELETE "http://myhost:port/users/someUserId"

Answer 2

As others have mentioned, you are not actually sending a HTTP DELETE request. Your delete button is part of a form post so when you submit the form it actually sends a HTTP POST request. Others have demonstrated some ways to invoke a DELETE (Ajax, and CURL) but I find the easiest way is to install a plugin on your favourite browser. If you're using Chrome you could try something like the Advanced Rest Client extension etc.

Answer 3

as others have stated your html form will send POST as it is your action.

if you want to keep the button and do a delete without javascript (AJAX call) then you should try changing the url pattern in java side and also put the delete button html in a seperate form

@RequestMapping(value="/users/delete/{id}", method=RequestMethod.POST)