SpringMVC - Change view when accessed by Mobile

Question

Hi All

I was wondering if someone has already solved this. I have a SpringMVC app and we are adding support to WebKit type mobiles (iPhone and Android basically) so I was wondering someone has found an elegant way of defining specific views depending on the client that sent the request.

I know that a simple if in a Controller implementation can do the trick, but I'm looking for something more flexible/elegant (a specific ViewResolver implementation, or an interceptor maybe).

Help will be greatly appreciated... as always =)

Answer 1

It would be pretty simple to create a custom ViewResolver that resolves views based on the User-Agent header.

• here is a list of mobile user agents. Check the header against it, and resolve a mobile view.
• if the user-agent is not a mobile, then return null, thus letting other resolvers resolve a view.
• make sure your resolvers are defined (in the spring xml) in the proper order, so that the mobile resolver is consulted first.

Answer 2

I think this is a good idea.

I created a JIRA issue for this.

Answer 3

Ok I found a more specific answer. There is a problem with the solution that Bozho proposed. the fact that the ViewResolvers no longer have access to the HttpServletRequest. There is a way to access the request but its kind of dirty IMHO.

So that said, this is a very elegant and easy to implement solution. Basicly it involves a custom ViewResolver (as Bozho proposed) but it adds an handlerInterceptor that adds the User-Agent to the model so you no longer have to add it manually.