Spring Interview Questions and Answers (2024)

Introduction

Spring MVC, at its core, is a powerful framework for building web applications in Java. If you're new to this technology or looking to deepen your understanding, you've landed in the right place. This blog is designed to demystify Spring MVC, break down its intricacies, and provide you with a comprehensive guide to navigate through common interview questions.

We have collected many Spring MVC Interview Questions. These questions will help you crack the top Spring MVC Interview and land your dream job.

So, let’s get started and help you ace your interview with the curated list of Top Spring MVC Interview Questions

If you want to learn more, follow this article, Spring vs Spring Boot vs Spring MVC.

Most Asked Spring MVC Interview Questions and Answers

1. What do you mean by MVC?

The MVC stands for Model View Controller. It is a software architectural design pattern. It separates an article into three main components, i.e. the Model, the View, and the Controller. Each of these components is responsible for building specific development aspects of an application. This approach to development is widely used and facilitates the reusability of the code and parallel development.

2. What is Spring MVC?

Spring MVC is a Java framework used to build Java Web Applications. It implements all the basic features of the MVC(Model View Controller) architecture and provides a loose coupling between the application’s Model, View, and Controller. This framework also supplies an inbuilt view resolver for selecting views.

3. What is the flow of Spring MVC?

Spring MVC follows the steps listed below to handle user requests:-

• Controller Action: The main controller directs the request to the appropriate controller based on the URL
   
• Data Processing: Controller processes the request
   
• Model Preparation: Controller prepares the data model that the user will see
   
• View Selection: View template is chosen by the system to present the model data
   
• Rendering: View template is populated with the model data
   
• User Response: The generated web page is sent back to the user

4. What are the main advantages of Spring MVC Framework?

The following are the main advantages of the Spring MVC Framework:-

• Modular Architecture: Spring MVC promotes a modular design that separates concerns (Model, View, Controller), making applications easier to develop, test, and maintain
   
• Flexibility: It supports a wide range of view technologies, allowing developers to choose the best fit for their project, such as JSP, Thymeleaf, or FreeMarker
   
• Reusable Components: The framework encourages the creation of reusable components, leading to efficient development and maintenance of applications
   
• Customizable: Developers can customize various aspects of the framework, from view resolvers to URL mappings
   
• Scalability: Spring's modular design and support for various application servers allow applications to scale both horizontally and vertically

5. What is the core problem that Spring MVC framework solves?

The core problem that the Spring MVC framework solves is the effective and organized development of web applications by providing a structured architecture that separates concerns (Model, View, Controller) and simplifies the development process. Prior to Spring MVC, web application development often faced challenges in managing the complexity of interactions between different components, making applications hard to maintain, test, and scale.

6. Explain the core features of the Spring Framework

The core features of the Spring MVC are:

• Spring MVC provides good customization for handler mapping, binding, view resolution, and validations
   
• Spring MVC allows the definition of an unlimited controller method, making the application highly adjustable and flexible
   
• It can effectively configure the framework and classes as beans
   
• It divides the functional roles and responsibilities separately
   
• It helps transfer the model using a map. It supports velocity, JSTL, and JSP, and the user can customize locale and theme resolution
   
• Spring has its tag library, making it more flexible and supporting data binding, themes, and beans lie cycles up to HTTP requests

7. What is the Spring MVC form tag library?

The Spring MVC form tag library is a set of custom tags provided by the Spring Framework to simplify the process of creating and handling HTML forms in web applications. These tags are designed to work seamlessly with Spring's MVC architecture and assist in binding form data to model objects on the server side. This tag library is particularly useful for tasks like rendering form elements, populating them with data from model objects, and handling form submissions.

8. What are some benefits of the Spring MVC framework over other MVC frameworks?

The benefits of the Spring MVC framework over other MVC frameworks are listed below:

• In Spring MVC, there is a specialized object for every role. Thus it provides a clear separation of roles.
   
• In Spring MVC, you can reuse your code as commands instead of mirroring them to extend a particular framework base class.
   
• In Spring MVC, we have powerful and straightforward configuration options for both the framework and the application classes in JavaBeans.
   
• Customizable handler mapping, view resolution, binding and validation.
   
• Customizable locale and theme resolution

9. What is the DispatcherServlet in the Spring MVC framework?

The DispatcherServlet is an implementation of the Front Controller design pattern associated with handling all incoming web requests for a Spring MVC application. The Front Controller pattern is a common pattern in web applications that receives all requests and routes them to different application components for processing.
The DispatcherServlet routes web requests to the Spring MVC controllers in Spring MVC. It also finds the correct controller for processing a request which it does with the lep of the handler mapping like @RequestMapping annotation. It is responsible for delegating local view names to the ViewResolver and sending the rendered response to the client.

10. Explain the front controller of Spring MVC.

The Front Controller is a DispatcherServlet class. It is responsible for dispatching the request to the appropriate controller and managing the flow of the application.

11. Does the DispatcherServlet instantiate via an application context?

The DispatcherServlet is not instantiated via an application context. Instead, Servlet containers like Jetty or Tomcat instantiate it. You just need to define the DispatcherServlet in the web.xml file.

12. What is the root application context is Spring MVC?

In Spring MVC, The root application context is the context loaded using ContextLoaderListener. This context should have globally available resources, while the one initialized using DispatcherServlet is specific to that servlet.
Spring MVC allows multiple DispatcherServlet in a Spring MVC web application. So, multiple contexts, each of which is specific to the respective servlet, may have the same root context.

13. What is the ContextLoaderListener in Spring MVC?

The ContextLoaderListener in Spring MVC loads and creates an ApplicationContext and puts it in the ServletContext. It also ties the lifecycle of the ApplicationContext to the lifecycle of the ServletContext. You can get ServletContext from WebApplicationContext using getServletContext() method.

14. What is the @Controller annotation used for?

The @Controller annotation is used to indicate that a particular class serves the role of a controller. Its main purpose is to act as a stereotype for the annotated class by indicating its role.
 Also, see Html interview questions.

15. How do you declare a class as a controller class in Spring MVC?

In Spring MVC, if you want to declare a class a controller class, then you need to specify the @Controller annotation on the class name, as shown below.
@Controller
class ClassName{}

16. How can you create a controller without using an annotation?

The @Controller annotation is used to define the Controller in Spring MVC. But we can also create a controller without using the @Controller by annotating the Controller classes using @Component annotation.

17. How would you map a controller class and its method with the URL?

To map a controller class and its methods with URL, the @RequestMapping annotation is used. You have to specify this annotation on the class name and the method name with the specified URL(path of the requested page).
For example,

@Controller 
@RequestMapping(“/path1”)
class Class_Name{
@RequestMapping(“/path2”)
  public string Method_Name(){}
}

18. Write down some of the valid return types of a controller method.

Following are some of the popular valid return types of a controller method:

• void
   
• String
   
• View
   
• Map
   
• Model(Interface)
   
• ModelAndView(Class)
   
• HTTP headers
   
• HttpEntity<?> or ResponseEntity<?>
  
  Each return type has some specific purpose, like if you don’t want to return any view name, then make the return type void. If you want to return the view name, then make the return type a String.

19. What is the Model in Spring MVC?

In Spring MVC, the Model is a reference to have the data for rendering. It works as a container that contains the data of the application. The data can be in any form like strings, objects, information from the database etc. The model is always created and passed to the view in Spring MVC.

20. What is a view in Spring MVC?

A view is an interface in the Spring MVC application whose implementations are responsible for rendering context and exposing the model. It is used for displaying the information to the user in a specific format. Views in Spring MVC are addressed by a view name and resolved by a view resolver.

21. What is a ViewResolver in Spring MVC?

In Spring MVC, the ViewResolver is a way of working with the views. It enables rendering models in the browser without trying to implement specific view technology. It provides a mapping between the view names and actual views.

22. What is the View Resolver pattern? 

The View Resolver pattern is a J2EE pattern that allows a web application to choose its view technology dynamically. For example, HTML, JSP, Tapestry,XSLT, JSF.
Here, the View resolver holds a mapping of different views, and the controller returns the name of the view. It is then passed to the View Resolver for selecting an appropriate view.

23. How to get HTML form data in Spring MVC controller? 

In Spring MVC, you can retrieve HTML form data submitted by a user in the controller by using the @RequestParam annotation. Let's take a look at a basic example.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
   <title>HTML Form</title>
</head>
<body>
   <form action="processForm" method="post">
       <label for="name">Name:</label>
       <input type="text" id="name" name="name"><br><br>
       <input type="submit" value="Submit">
   </form>
</body>
</html>

Here we have a form with a single Name field and a submit button.

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PostMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestParam;
@Controller
public class MyController {
   @PostMapping("/processForm")
   public String processForm(@RequestParam("name") String name) {
       System.out.println("Name: " + name);
       // You can perform any required actions here
       
       return "result-page"; // Return the name of the result page view
   }
}

You can also try this code with Online Java Compiler

Run Code

In this example, we used the @RequestParam annotation to access the submitted data.

24. What are the different types of ViewResolver present in Spring MVC?

The followings are the different ViewResolver:

• AbstactCatchingViewResolver
   
• XmlViewResolver
   
• ResourceBundleViewResolver
   
• UrlBasedViewResolver
   
• InternalResourceViewResolver
   
• VelocityView / FreeMakerViewResolver

25. How is the right view chosen when it comes to the rendering phase?

When the Controller returns logical view names to the DispatcherServlet, it then consults with the ViewResolver to find the right view. Depending on the implementation of the ViewResolver, it resolves the logical view into the physical resource, like a JSP page.

26. What is an InternalResourceViewResolver in Spring MVC?

In Spring MVC, the InternalResourceViewResolver is an implementation in the ViewResolver interface. It is the default view resolver, configured in Spring, and DispatcherServlet uses this to find the right view. It is used to render JSPs.

27. Why do you have access to the model in your view?

You have access to the Model in your view because you need to render the output and the Model which contains the data to be rendered.

28. What are the different types of annotations used for handling different kinds of incoming HTTP request methods?

The following annotations are used:

• @GetMapping 
   
• @PostMapping
   
• @PutMapping
   
• @DeleteMapping

29. What is the purpose of the @RequestParam Annotation in Spring MVC?

The @RequestParam Annotation in Spring MVC is used to extract and map the query parameter to the method parameter in your controller. It fetches the value of the parameter in the form request.

30. What is the purpose of the @PathVariable Annotation in Spring MVC?

The @PathVariable annotation in Spring MVC is used to extract the value of the  URI template variables and set their values with the method parameter. 

31. What is the difference between the @RequestParam and @PathVariable and Annotations in Spring MVC?

Though, Both the @RequestParam and @PathVariable in Spring MVC are used to extract values from the HTTP request. The @RequestParam extracts the value of the query parameter from the URL, while the @PathVariable extracts the values from the URI.

32. What is the purpose of the @ResponseBody annotations in Spring MVC?

The @ResponseBody annotation in Spring MVC tells the controller that the returned object is serialised and automatically passed back into the HttpRespobse object.

33. What are the different ways we can read data from the form in Spring MVC?

Following are the ways by which we can read data from the form:

• The @RequestParam annotation is used for reading the form data and binds it with the method parameter present in the controller.
   
• The @ModelAttribute annotation allows us to read the form data and bind it to a Java object.
   
• The HttpServletRequest interface(a Java interface) is used to read the HTML from data from the user.

34. What do you know about validations in Spring MVC?

The validation in Spring MVC is the validation of the user input data. It is one of the most important features of Spring MVC. It restricts the input data provided by the user. We need to use Bean Validation API to validate the user input.

35. What do you mean by the Bean Validation API?

It is a Java specification used to apply constraints in the form of annotations on a method, class or field of a JavaBeans component. We can validate a number, length, regular expression, etc.

36. Explain the important difference Between @Controller and @RestController?

Both @controller and @RestController are specializations of @components annotation. @Controller and @RestController mainly differ by ResponseBody annotation. @Controller does not call @ResponseBody to all Controllers by itself. While @RestController uses both Controller and @ResponseBody and calls @ResponseBody to all the controller methods.

37. What is meant by  @RequestBody and the @ResponseBody Annotations?

@RequestBody is used to bind RequestBody to a method parameter. It tells that the incoming request should be converted into the parameter that is specified. @ResponseBody makes sure that the return type of the controller method should be serialized and it should be included as the response body.

38. What is meant by Model, ModelMap and ModelAndView?

In simple terms, we can consider the Model as an interface and ModeMap as a class, while ModelAndView can be considered as a bucket containing both ModelMap and View.

39. What do you mean by SessionAttributes and SessionAttribute?

SessionAttributes and SessionAttribute are used to control the session data for web applications. While using SessionAttributes, multiple model attributes are stored in the session and made available for further requests in the same session. SessionAttribute is used to bind specified model attributes from a session to the method parameter.

40. What is meant by spring MVC tiles?

Spring MVC Tiles is an integration between the Spring MVC framework and the Apache Tiles library. Apache Tiles is a templating framework that allows you to define reusable layouts and views for your web application. It is particularly useful for creating consistent user interfaces with a modular structure. Spring MVC Tiles provides a way to create web pages by assembling smaller reusable components called "tiles" into a larger page layout. Each tile represents a piece of the page, such as a header, footer, sidebar, or content section.

41. What do you mean by @EnableWebMVC? Explain its purpose?

@EnableWebMVC annotation is used to enable Spring MVC in an application. It is mainly used in configuration classes. The main purpose of @EnableWebMVC includes request and response handling and processing.

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