Custom property editors do not work for request parameters in Spring MVC?

Question

Hello,

I'm trying to create a multiaction web controller using Spring annotations. This controller will be responsible for adding and removing user profiles and preparing reference data for the jsp page.

@Controller
public class ManageProfilesController {
    @InitBinder
    public void initBinder(WebDataBinder binder) { 
        binder.registerCustomEditor(UserAccount.class,"account", new UserAccountPropertyEditor(userManager)); 
        binder.registerCustomEditor(Profile.class, "profile", new ProfilePropertyEditor(profileManager));
        logger.info("Editors registered");
    }

    @RequestMapping("remove")
    public void up( @RequestParam("account") UserAccount account,
                @RequestParam("profile") Profile profile) {
        ...
    }

    @RequestMapping("")
    public ModelAndView defaultView(@RequestParam("account") UserAccount account) {
        logger.info("Default view handling");
        ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView();
        logger.info(account.getLogin());
        mav.addObject("account", account);
        mav.addObject("profiles", profileManager.getProfiles());
        mav.setViewName(view);
        return mav;
    }
    ...
}

Here is the part of my webContext.xml file:

<context:component-scan base-package="ru.mirea.rea.webapp.controllers" />
<context:annotation-config/>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping">
    <property name="mappings">
            <value>
               ...
              /home/users/manageProfiles=users.manageProfilesController
            </value>
    </property>
</bean>

<bean id="users.manageProfilesController" class="ru.mirea.rea.webapp.controllers.users.ManageProfilesController">
    <property name="view" value="home\users\manageProfiles"/>
</bean>
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter" />

However, when i open the mapped url, i get exception:

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Cannot convert value of type [java.lang.String] to required type [ru.mirea.rea.model.UserAccount]: no matching editors or conversion strategy found

I use spring 2.5.6 and plan to move to the Spring 3.0 in some not very distant future. However, according to this JIRA https://jira.springsource.org/browse/SPR-4182 it should be possible already in spring 2.5.1.

The debug shows that the InitBinder method is correctly called.

What am i doing wrong?

Update:

public class UserAccountPropertyEditor extends PropertyEditorSupport {
    static Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(UserAccountPropertyEditor.class);

    public UserAccountPropertyEditor(IUserDAO dbUserManager) {
        this.dbUserManager = dbUserManager;
    }

    private IUserDAO dbUserManager;

    public String getAsText() {
        UserAccount obj = (UserAccount) getValue();
        if (null==obj) {
                return "";
        } else {
            return obj.getId().toString();
        }
    }

    public void setAsText(final String value) {
        try {   
            Long id = Long.parseLong(value);
            UserAccount acct = dbUserManager.getUserAccountById(id);
            if (null!=acct) {
                super.setValue(acct);
            } else {
                logger.error("Binding error. Cannot find userAccount with id  ["+value+"]");
                throw new IllegalArgumentException("Binding error. Cannot find userAccount with id  ["+value+"]");
            }
        } catch (NumberFormatException e) {
            logger.error("Binding error. Invalid id: " + value);
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Binding error. Invalid id: " + value);
        }
    }
}

There are no errors logged from UserAccountPropertyEditor.

Answer 1

I don't think you want to be specifying the field argument to WebDataBinder.registerCustomEditor(). This intended to work alongside form-backing objects, and you're not using that.

Try the simpler 2-arg method instead, and it should work:

binder.registerCustomEditor(UserAccount.class, new UserAccountPropertyEditor(userManager)); 
binder.registerCustomEditor(Profile.class, new ProfilePropertyEditor(profileManager));