Question

My controller has a method to return a form backing object:

@ModelAttribute(“userData”)
public UserData formBackingObject() {
    return new UserData();
}

When the form submission fails its validation checks, it is redisplayed but when it is re-rendered, the userData object does not contain the user-submitted values – only the values present upon initialiation above.

@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST)
public void userData(HttpServletRequest request, @ModelAttribute(“userData”) UserData userData, BindingResult bindResult, ModelMap model) {

    // do validation checks

    if (bindResult.hasErrors()) {
        // perform redirect back to same page
    }

    return "userData";
}

Answer 1

You need to do a model.addAttribute(“key”, value) . This will help bind the values to the model object check http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/current/spring-framework-reference/html/mvc.html for sample.