Question

I have some common components that are always present in every page served by a given Controller class.

At the beginning of each @RequestMapping method I populate the model with these common components.

Is there a way to define a method be called prior to each of the controller methods so that I can get all of this copy/paste into one place?

Answer 1

Just annotate a method with @ModelAttribute

The below would add a Foo instance to the model under the name “foo”

@ModelAttribute("foo")
public Foo foo() {
    return new Foo();
}

See the @ModelAttribute documentation