Spring MVC returns 404

Question

I'm trying to get a Hello World Spring MVC 4.3.18 with Tomcat 9.0.20 and IntelliJ 2019.1 up and running to move on with my Udemy tutorial which unfortunately uses Eclipse. How do I display a page via a controller?

I checked web.xml, dispatcher-servlet.xml and applicationContext.xml for configuration mistakes. I checked my project for errors and IntelliJ says there are no errors. I downloaded a working IntelliJ project from GitHub: https://github.com/vivlai/SpringMVC (changed it to java 12 and tomcat 9) and run it successfully. I compared all files, directories, configurations to each other, the only difference was in the spring version used (4.3.10) and some xml version.

web.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_4_0.xsd"
         version="4.0">
    <context-param>
        <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
        <param-value>/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml</param-value>
    </context-param>
    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
    </listener>
    <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>
</web-app>

dispatcher-servlet.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
       xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc.xsd
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

    <mvc:annotation-driven/>
    <context:component-scan base-package="spring.mvc"/>

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

</beans>

applicationContext.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">

</beans>

HomeController.java

package spring.mvc;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;

@Controller
public class HomeController {

    @RequestMapping("/")
    public String showPage() {
        return "index";
    }
}

So deployment is successful and it registered my mapping request and with the InternalResourceViewResolver pointing to the views folder in the WEB-INF it should have everything ready?

So I expect the index.jsp to show when starting the server, but I get the 404 with the additional note: The origin server did not find a current representation for the target resource or is not willing to disclose that one exists. Any help is appreciated!

Edit:

Answer 1

Follow this process :

web.xml :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee 
         http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_1.xsd"
    version="3.1">
    <display-name>Project</display-name>

    <!-- Configure Spring MVC Dispatcher Servlet -->
    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
            <param-value>WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml</param-value>
        </init-param>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>

    <!-- Set up URL mapping for Spring MVC Dispatcher Servlet -->
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

</web-app>

Create just one applicationContext.xml file (creating dispatcher-servlet.xml is unnecessary and wrong):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc.xsd
    ">

    <mvc:annotation-driven/>
    <context:component-scan base-package="spring.mvc"/>

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

</beans>

This is enough. Just run your project. It will work.

I don't have much idea about Intellij IDE :

But I have found an url : https://medium.com/@yuntianhe/create-a-web-project-with-maven-spring-mvc-b859503f74d7

This will help you to setup your project properly.