How to avoid the Circular view path exception with Spring MVC test

Question

I have the following code in one of my controllers    Controller  RequestMapping   preference   public class PreferenceController         RequestMapping method   RequestMethod GET  produces    text html       public String preference             return  preference             I am simply trying to test it using Spring MVC test as follows    ContextConfiguration  WebAppConfiguration  RunWith SpringJUnit4ClassRunner class  public class PreferenceControllerTest         Autowired     private WebApplicationContext ctx       private MockMvc mockMvc       Before     public void setup             mockMvc   webAppContextSetup ctx  build                Test     public void circularViewPathIssue   throws Exception           mockMvc perform get   preference                    andDo print               I am getting the following exception      Circular view path  preference   would dispatch back to the current   handler URL   preference  again  Check your ViewResolver setup   Hint    This may be the result of an unspecified view  due to default view   name generation     What I find strange is that it works fine when I load the  full  context configuration that includes the template and view resolvers as shown below    lt bean class  org thymeleaf templateresolver ServletContextTemplateResolver  id  webTemplateResolver  gt       lt property name  prefix  value  WEB-INF web-templates     gt       lt property name  suffix  value   html    gt       lt property name  templateMode  value  HTML5    gt       lt property name  characterEncoding  value  UTF-8    gt       lt property name  order  value  2    gt       lt property name  cacheable  value  false    gt   lt  bean gt    I am well aware that the prefix added by the template resolver ensures that there is not  circular view path  when the app uses this template resolver    But then how I am supposed to test my app using Spring MVC test

User · Answer

Adding   after  preference solved the problem for me    Test public void circularViewPathIssue   throws Exception       mockMvc perform get   preference                 andDo print

User · Answer

I solved this problem by using  ResponseBody like below    RequestMapping value     resturl   method   RequestMethod GET  produces     application json         ResponseStatus HttpStatus OK       Transactional value    jpaTransactionManager       public  ResponseBody List lt DomainObject gt  findByResourceID  PathParam  resourceID   String resourceID

User · Answer

This has nothing to do with Spring MVC testing  When you don t declare a ViewResolver  Spring registers a default InternalResourceViewResolver which creates instances of JstlView for rendering the View  The JstlView class extends InternalResourceView which is  Wrapper for a JSP or other resource within the same web application  Exposes model objects as request attributes and forwards the request to the specified resource URL using a javax servlet RequestDispatcher  A URL for this view is supposed to specify a resource within the web application  suitable for RequestDispatcher s forward or include method   Emphasis mine  In other words  the view  before rendering  will try to get a RequestDispatcher to which to forward    Before doing this it checks the following if  path startsWith  quot   quot     uri equals path    uri equals StringUtils applyRelativePath uri  path          throw new ServletException  quot Circular view path   quot    path    quot    would dispatch back  quot                             quot to the current handler URL   quot    uri    quot   again  Check your ViewResolver setup   quot                             quot  Hint  This may be the result of an unspecified view  due to default view name generation   quot       where path is the view name  what you returned from the  Controller  In this example  that is preference  The variable uri holds the uri of the request being handled  which is  context preference  The code above realizes that if you were to forward to  context preference  the same servlet  since the same handled the previous  would handle the request and you would go into an endless loop   When you declare a ThymeleafViewResolver and a ServletContextTemplateResolver with a specific prefix and suffix  it builds the View differently  giving it a path like WEB-INF web-templates preference html  ThymeleafView instances locate the file relative to the ServletContext path by using a ServletContextResourceResolver templateInputStream   resourceResolver getResourceAsStream templateProcessingParameters  resourceName     which eventually return servletContext getResourceAsStream resourceName    This gets a resource that is relative to the ServletContext path  It can then use the TemplateEngine to generate the HTML  There s no way an endless loop can happen here

User · Answer

In my case  I had this problem while trying to serve JSP pages using Spring boot application   Here s what worked for me   application properties  spring mvc view prefix  WEB-INF views  spring mvc view suffix  jsp   pom xml  To enable support for JSPs  we would need to add a dependency on tomcat-embed-jasper    lt dependency gt       lt groupId gt org apache tomcat embed lt  groupId gt       lt artifactId gt tomcat-embed-jasper lt  artifactId gt       lt scope gt provided lt  scope gt   lt  dependency gt

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I use the annotation to configure spring web app  the problem solved by adding a InternalResourceViewResolver bean to the configuration  Hope it would be helpful    Configuration  EnableWebMvc  ComponentScan basePackages      com example springmvc     public class WebMvcConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter         Bean     public InternalResourceViewResolver internalResourceViewResolver             InternalResourceViewResolver resolver   new InternalResourceViewResolver            resolver setPrefix   jsp             resolver setSuffix   jsp            return resolver

User · Answer

I am using Spring Boot to try and load a webpage  not test  and had this problem  My solution was a bit different than those above considering the slightly different circumstances   although those answers helpled me understand     I simply had to change my Spring Boot starter dependency in Maven  from    lt dependency gt           lt groupId gt org springframework boot lt  groupId gt           lt artifactId gt spring-boot-starter-web lt  artifactId gt   lt  dependency gt    to    lt dependency gt           lt groupId gt org springframework boot lt  groupId gt           lt artifactId gt spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf lt  artifactId gt   lt  dependency gt    Just changing the  web  to  thymeleaf  fixed the problem for me

User · Answer

Here s an easy fix if you don t actually care about rendering the view   Create a subclass of InternalResourceViewResolver which doesn t check for circular view paths   public class StandaloneMvcTestViewResolver extends InternalResourceViewResolver        public StandaloneMvcTestViewResolver             super                Override     protected AbstractUrlBasedView buildView final String viewName  throws Exception           final InternalResourceView view    InternalResourceView  super buildView viewName              prevent checking for circular view paths         view setPreventDispatchLoop false           return view            Then set up your test with it   MockMvc mockMvc    Before public void setUp         final MyController controller   new MyController         mockMvc               MockMvcBuilders standaloneSetup controller                       setViewResolvers new StandaloneMvcTestViewResolver                         build

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Controller    RestController  I had the same issue and I noticed that my controller was also annotated with  Controller  Replacing it with  RestController solved the issue  Here is the explanation from Spring Web MVC       RestController is a composed annotation that is itself meta-annotated   with  Controller and  ResponseBody indicating a controller whose every   method inherits the type-level  ResponseBody annotation and therefore   writes directly to the response body vs view resolution and rendering   with an HTML template

User · Answer

This is happening because Spring is removing  preference  and appending the  preference  again making the same path as the request Uri    Happening like this    request Uri    preference   remove  preference        append path       preference   end string    preference   This is getting into a loop which the Spring notifies you by throwing exception    Its best in your interest to give a different view name like  preferenceView  or anything you like

User · Answer

When using  Controller annotation  you need  RequestMapping and  ResponseBody annotations   Try again after adding annotation  ResponseBody

User · Answer

Add the annotation  ResponseBody to your method return

User · Answer

If you are using Spring Boot  then add thymeleaf dependency into your pom xml         lt dependency gt           lt groupId gt org thymeleaf lt  groupId gt           lt artifactId gt thymeleaf-spring4 lt  artifactId gt           lt version gt 2 1 6 RELEASE lt  version gt       lt  dependency gt

User · Answer

This is how I solved this problem    Before     public void setup             InternalResourceViewResolver viewResolver   new InternalResourceViewResolver            viewResolver setPrefix   WEB-INF jsp view             viewResolver setSuffix   jsp             mockMvc   MockMvcBuilders standaloneSetup new HelpController                                      setViewResolvers viewResolver                                    build

User · Answer

In my case  I was trying out Kotlin   Spring boot and I got into the Circular View Path issue  All the suggestions I got online could not help  until I tried the below   Originally I had annotated my controller using  Controller  import org springframework stereotype Controller  I then replaced  Controller with  RestController  import org springframework web bind annotation RestController  And it worked

User · Answer

When running Spring Boot   Freemarker if the page appears   Whitelabel Error Page This application has no explicit mapping for   error  so you are seeing this as a fallback   In spring-boot-starter-parent 2 2 1 RELEASE version freemarker does not work    rename Freemarker files from  ftl to  ftlh Add to application properties  spring freemarker expose-request-attributes   true   spring freemarker suffix    ftl

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Another simple approach   package org yourpackagename   import org springframework boot SpringApplication  import org springframework boot autoconfigure SpringBootApplication  import org springframework boot builder SpringApplicationBuilder  import org springframework boot context web SpringBootServletInitializer    SpringBootApplication public class Application extends SpringBootServletInitializer           Override         protected SpringApplicationBuilder configure SpringApplicationBuilder application                return application sources PreferenceController class                   public static void main String   args            SpringApplication run PreferenceController class  args

User · Answer

if you have not used a  RequestBody and are using only  Controller  simplest way to fix this is using  RestController instead of  Controller

User · Answer

I am using Spring Boot with Thymeleaf  This is what worked for me  There are similar answers with JSP but note that I am using HTML  not JSP  and these are in the folder src main resources templates like in a standard Spring Boot project as explained here  This could also be your case    InjectMocks private MyController myController    Before public void setup         MockitoAnnotations initMocks this        this mockMvc   MockMvcBuilders standaloneSetup myController                       setViewResolvers viewResolver                         build       private ViewResolver viewResolver         InternalResourceViewResolver viewResolver   new InternalResourceViewResolver         viewResolver setPrefix  classpath templates         viewResolver setSuffix   html         return viewResolver      Hope this helps

User · Answer

For Thymeleaf   I just began using spring 4 and thymeleaf  when I encountered this error it was resolved by adding    lt bean class  org thymeleaf spring4 view ThymeleafViewResolver  gt     lt property name  templateEngine  ref  templateEngine    gt     lt property name  order  value  0    gt   lt  bean gt

User · Answer

try adding compile  org springframework boot spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf   dependency to your gradle file Thymeleaf helps mapping views

[spring] How to avoid the "Circular view path" exception with Spring MVC test

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