Problem

Recently, just converted the Spring MVC xml-based form controller to annotation-based form controller, and hits the following error message.

SEVERE: Neither BindingResult nor plain target object for bean name ‘customerForm’ available as request attribute
java.lang.IllegalStateException: Neither BindingResult nor plain target object for bean name ‘customerForm’ available as request attribute

Above error message is clearly indicated that the “customerForm” bean is not exists, and i 100% sure the view resolver is configured properly and the “CustomerForm.jsp” view page is existed.

Form Controller

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/customer.htm")
public class CustomerController{
 
       @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET)
	public String initForm(ModelMap model){
		//return form view
		return "CustomerForm";
	}

View Resolver

         ...
	<bean id="viewResolver"
	      class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver" >
              <property name="prefix">
                  <value>/WEB-INF/pages/</value>
              </property>
              <property name="suffix">
                 <value>.jsp</value>
             </property>
        </bean>

Solution

The root caused is the incorrect view name in JSP page, see below.

<form:form method="POST" commandName="customerForm">

The “customerForm” is not exists in the controller mapping anymore, see annotation mapping @RequestMapping(“/customer.htm”), it should change to “customer”.

<form:form method="POST" commandName="customer">

Similar Cases

I’ve seen quite many similar cases happened in validator or SimpleFormController class as well. To solve it, just make sure the mapping name is matched or existed.

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