How should I map model beans to view model beans in Spring MVC?

Question

In my Spring MVC application we have form objects that are mapped to by the <form:form tag in JSP. These objects are separate from my regular model beans, and really form a sort of view model. The difficulty with these objects is the mapping between these objects and the actual model beans expected by the service objects. Currently we have manually written code mapping forms to beans and vice versa in the controllers. This is less than optimal because of the amount of extra code it requires. The other options we've considered are.

• Write a mapping class. This still requires manually writing the code, but at least it's not in the controller.
  • Automatically generate the mapping class. Presumably this would require manually generating and updating some sort of mapping file.
• Name the properties in beans and the forms the same and use Spring's BeanUtils.copyProperties to move them back and forth. This seems bad because it is not an obvious link would cause strange run-time behavior if it wasn't kept consistent.
• Write the form object as a facade that keeps a bean internally and updates it.

What is the best method for the long term health of the project of performing this action?

Answer 1

I suggest you to use dozer framework for mapping domain objects and view object to each others .Only problem you will have to still create view class manually.You can also automate this with code generation.