Need some explanation about BeanNameViewResolver

Question

i read the documentation here: http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/2.0.x/api/org/springframework/web/servlet/view/BeanNameViewResolver.html

but i think that the spring documentation sometimes can become complex and hard to understand, so i need little explanation about this class.

Answer 1

As described in the documentation, BeanNameViewResolver resolves Views declared as beans. Usually you need it for some special-purpose views.

Imagine, for example, that one of your controllers should render an Excel spreadsheet. So, you subclass AbstractExcelView and implement your custom logic to render a spreadsheet based on model values:

public class MyExcelView extends AbstractExcelView { ... }

and declare it as a bean:

<bean id = "myExcelView" class = "MyExcelView" />

Then declaring an BeanNameViewResolver makes it available to controllers: when controller returns ModelAndView with view name myExcelView, your spreadsheet will be rendered.

BeanNameViewResolver is usually used in conjunction with some other view resolver that handles "regular" views (so that if BeanNameViewResolver can't find a view, the other resolver tries to find it):

<bean class = "...BeanNameViewResolver">
    <property name = "order" value = "0" />
</bean>

<bean class = "...InternalResourceViewResolver">
    <property name = "order" value = "1" />
    ...
</bean>