Spring MVC Controllers vs. Webscripts

As we transition to the new Hyland Community, some post links may be temporarily disrupted as we finalize redirects. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working to resolve this as quickly as possible. Details.

mangar

I recently was able to add spring controllers to my Alfresco.  I just added this to my web.xml:

   <servlet>
        <servlet-name>springMVC</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>

    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>springMVC</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/springMVC/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>
‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

Added a springMVC-servlet.xml like this: (only important bits:

    <context:annotation-config />
    <context:component-scan base-package="org.xxx.alfresco.web"/>
    <mvc:annotation-driven />
‍‍‍‍‍

and presto!  SpringMVC Controllers in my Alfresco.  I can even easily inject the registry, nodeservice, etc…. (Actually, the @Autowired annotation works so it's so easy and supercool.)

This seems A LOT simpler than the webscript framework.  More powerfull/flexible, I can do views/templates.  Yes I understand that I can do all of this in a webscript, but SpringMVC is SO much easier.

Now, I did a quick search on the internets and found nothing on this technique. Which makes me think one of 3 things: (in ascending order of likelihood)

1. I am a ground breaking genius.
2. This is obvious, been done many times, and so simple no tutorials are necessary. 
3. There is something horribly wrong with this technique.

I assume that it is #3, but what do you think?

Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

mrogers

There's nothing inherently wrong.   However you are essentially re-inventing the wheel.  I'm surprised you think it's so much easier, web scripts are supposed to be simple and easy too.

You will need to handle your transactions and exceptions correctly ( with a retrying transaction helper ) so you will also need to reinvent some framework code to go on top of sping mvc.