Displaying a view (list of all employees) from a Controller in Spring MVC

Question

Trying to simply output a list of all employees in a view report from a controller in Spring. Getting an error relating to Freemarker, unsure of how to resolve.

Relevant classes:

Employee.java model

package mvc_course.models;

import java.util.HashSet;
import java.util.Set;

public class Employee {

int employee_number;
String employee_name;
String address;
String ni_number;
String iban_number;
double starting_salary;
int employee_type_id;
int commission_rate;
int total_sales;

public static Set<Employee> employeeList = new HashSet<Employee>();

public Employee(String name, String address, String nin, String iban, double salary) {
    this.employee_name = name;
    this.address = address;
    this.ni_number = nin;
    this.iban_number = iban;
    this.starting_salary = salary;
}

public int getEmployee_number() {
    return employee_number;
}

public void setEmployee_number(int employee_number) {
    this.employee_number = employee_number;
}

public String getEmployee_name() {
    return employee_name;
}

public void setEmployee_name(String employee_name) {
    this.employee_name = employee_name;
}

public String getAddress() {
    return address;
}

public void setAddress(String address) {
    this.address = address;
}

public String getNi_number() {
    return ni_number;
}

public void setNi_number(String ni_number) {
    this.ni_number = ni_number;
}

public String getIban_number() {
    return iban_number;
}

public void setIban_number(String iban_number) {
    this.iban_number = iban_number;
}

public double getStarting_salary() {
    return starting_salary;
}

public void setStarting_salary(double starting_salary) {
    this.starting_salary = starting_salary;
}

public int getEmployee_type_id() {
    return employee_type_id;
}

public void setEmployee_type_id(int employee_type_id) {
    this.employee_type_id = employee_type_id;
}

public int getCommission_rate() {
    return commission_rate;
}

public void setCommission_rate(int commission_rate) {
    this.commission_rate = commission_rate;
}

public int getTotal_sales() {
    return total_sales;
}

public void setTotal_sales(int total_sales) {
    this.total_sales = total_sales;
}

}

ReportController.java

    package mvc_course.controllers;

import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.ResultSet;
import java.sql.Statement;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import javax.sql.DataSource;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;

import mvc_course.models.Employee;

@Controller
public class ReportController {

    @Autowired
    private DataSource dataSource;

    @RequestMapping(value="showEmployees.mvc")
    public String showEmployees(Model m){

        List<Employee> employees = new ArrayList<Employee>();

        try{
            Connection c = dataSource.getConnection();
            Statement s = c.createStatement();
            String sql = "SELECT * FROM Employees";
            ResultSet rs = s.executeQuery(sql);

            List<String[]>rows = new ArrayList<String[]>();

            while(rs.next()){

            String[] row = {
                        rs.getString(1),
                        rs.getString(2),
                        rs.getString(3),
                        rs.getString(4),
                        rs.getString(5),
                        rs.getString(6)};
                rows.add(row);
                }

            for (String[] row : rows) {
                Employee e = new Employee(row[1], row[2], row[3], row[4], Double.parseDouble(row[5]));
                employees.add(e);
                System.out.println();
                for (String string : row) {
                    System.out.print(string + " ");
                }
            }

            m.addAttribute("employees");


        }catch (Exception e){
            System.out.println(e.getMessage());
        }


        return "EmployeesPerBuReport";

    }

}


**EmployeeReport.ftl**

    <!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Employees per BU</title>

<!-- Compiled and minified CSS -->
  <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/materialize/0.97.7/css/materialize.min.css">

  <!-- Compiled and minified JavaScript -->
  <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/materialize/0.97.7/js/materialize.min.js"></script>


</head>
<body>

<h1>Employees</h1>
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
    <th>Name</th>
    <th>Address</th>
    <th>National Insurance Number</th>
    <th>Bank Account Number</th>
    <th>Starting Salary</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<#list employees as employee>
            <tr>
                <td>${employee.getName}</td>
                <td>${employee.getAddress}</td>
                <td>${employee.getNi_number}</td>
                <td>${employee.getIban_number}</td>
                <td>${employee.getStarting_salary}</td>
            </tr>
        </#list>
</tbody>
</table>
</body>

</body>
</html>

Error:

FreeMarker template error (DEBUG mode; use RETHROW in production!): The following has evaluated to null or missing: ==> employee.getName [in template "EmployeesPerBuReport.ftl" at line 31, column 39] ---- Tip: It's the step after the last dot that caused this error, not those before it. ---- Tip: If the failing expression is known to be legally refer to something that's sometimes null or missing, either specify a default value like myOptionalVar!myDefault, or use <#if myOptionalVar??>when-present<#else>when-missing. (These only cover the last step of the expression; to cover the whole expression, use parenthesis: (myOptionalVar.foo)!myDefault, (myOptionalVar.foo)?? ---- ---- FTL stack trace ("~" means nesting-related): - Failed at: ${employee.getName} [in template "EmployeesPerBuReport.ftl" at line 31, column 37

Answer 1

Solved.

After changing getters and setters I resolved the problem by changing

<#list employees as employee>
        <tr>
            <td>${employee.getName}</td>
            <td>${employee.getAddress}</td>
            <td>${employee.getNi_number}</td>
            <td>${employee.getIban_number}</td>
            <td>${employee.getStarting_salary}</td>
        </tr>
    </#list>

to

<#list employees as e>
        <tr>
            <td>${e.name}</td>
            <td>${e.address}</td>
            <td>${e.ni_number}</td>
            <td>${e.iban_number}</td>
            <td>${e.starting_salary}</td>
        </tr>
    </#list>

Not sure why, but this seemed to fix. Problem was mostly down to badly named getters and field names though.

Answer 2

You don't have getName() method in the Employee class, you only have a getEmployee_name() (a quite strange name). After you have fixed that, you will get a different error, which you can fix if you write ${employee.name} instead of ${employee.getName}.

Answer 3

Simple typo: m.addAttribute("employees", employees);