Handling Contact Form Submission with Validation and HTTP Status Codes in Spring Boot

[Laurent45]

spring/example_24/src/main/java/com/eazybytes/eazyschool/controller/ContactController.java

Line 46 in 766c0f3

public String saveMessage(@Valid @ModelAttribute("contact") Contact contact, Errors errors){

Hi,
To better align with HTTP response status codes, we can return a ModelAndView object instead of a String, allowing us to explicitly set the HTTP status code to 400 BAD_REQUEST.

    @RequestMapping(value = "/saveMsg",method = POST)
    public ModelAndView saveMessage(@Valid @ModelAttribute("contact") Contact contact, Errors errors){
        ModelAndView modelAndView = new ModelAndView();
        
        if (errors.hasErrors()){
            log.error("Contact form validation failed due to : " + errors.toString());
            modelAndView.setStatus(HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST);
            modelAndView.setViewName("contact.html");
        } else {
            contactService.saveMessageDetails(contact);
            modelAndView.setStatus(HttpStatus.OK);
            modelAndView.setViewName("redirect:/contact");
        }

        return modelAndView;
    }

[VCastilloC2]

Hi @Laurent45,

Thanks for the suggestion. I agree that returning a ModelAndView allows us to explicitly set the appropriate HTTP status code while still rendering the corresponding view.

Using 400 Bad Request when validation fails better reflects the outcome of the request and aligns with HTTP semantics, while 200 OK (or a redirect) can be used for successful submissions.

I think this would improve the controller without significantly changing its behavior. I'd be happy to work on this enhancement if it's still available.