Question

I have multiple SimpleFormController controllers. One controller contains a command object used to filter results in the other controllers. I seem to be missing something simple, but I can’t seem to find a way to use the same instance of the command object in the other controllers.

My setup is such that this main controller, let’s call it RootController extends SimpleFormController, and the rest of the controllers extend RootController. The idea was that the command object is stored in one place – RootController and the controllers that extend it reuse the same object. However, it doesn’t seem to be working that way, other controllers seem to have their own copy of the command object.

Answer 1

Form backing objects are just normal Pojos, so you can inherit it form each other.

public class BaseCommand {
  ...
}

public class MoreCommand extends BaseComman {
  ...
}

May you just forget the “update” the commandClass in your Controller Subclasses.

Anyway: notice that SimpleFormController is deprecated in Spring 3.0. Instead the Annotation Style is preferred.

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Update: One INSTANCE of an command object, can be handled by only one INSTANCE of an Controller. So you can subclass the Controller (don’t miss to call super), but you can not have two instances of the controller and hope that both are invoked.