Using text, textarea, password, and hidden fields

In this recipe, you will learn how to display a text field, textarea field, password field, and hidden field using Spring form tags. When the form is submitted, we will retrieve the field value in a controller method.

How to do it…

Here are the steps to display and process text fields:

1. If a default value is necessary, use a String attribute of the default object (refer to the Setting a form's default values using a model object recipe):

   user.setFirstName("Joe");

2. In the JSP, use one of these Spring form tags:

   <form:input path="firstName" />
   <form:textarea path="firstName" />
   <form:password path="firstName" />
   <form:hidden path="firstName" />

3. In the controller method processing the form submission, make sure that the @ModelAttribute object has a corresponding String attribute:

   public class User {
     private String firstName;
   ...

How it works…

The Spring form tag generates the HTML form field and populates it with the default value...