What is Model in ModelAndView from Spring MVC?

The model presents a placeholder to hold the information you want to display on the view. It could be a string, which is in your above example, or it could be an object containing bunch of properties.

Example 1

If you have...

return new ModelAndView("welcomePage","WelcomeMessage","Welcome!");

... then in your jsp, to display the message, you will do:-

Hello Stranger! ${WelcomeMessage} // displays Hello Stranger! Welcome!

Example 2

If you have...

MyBean bean = new MyBean();
bean.setName("Mike!");
bean.setMessage("Meow!");

return new ModelAndView("welcomePage","model",bean);

... then in your jsp, you can do:-

Hello ${model.name}! {model.message} // displays Hello Mike! Meow!