Like 'redirect:' prefix , Spring also allows the use of the special directive forward: to return the forwarded URL as a String.
On encountering this special prefix in the return value of a controller, Spring uses javax.servlet.RequestDispatcher#forward to forward a request from one controller to another .
Forwarding a URL transfers the request internally within the same server without involving the client browser. This means the original request URL stays the same in the browser, and there's only one round trip instead of two (as with redirect).
The following example demonstrates the use of 'forward:'
The Controller
We have to manually prepare the forwarded URL with any possible path variables and query parameters
package com.logicbig.example;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PathVariable;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestParam;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.support.RedirectAttributes;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.view.RedirectView;
import jakarta.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import java.util.Map;
@Controller
public class MyController {
@RequestMapping(value = "test/{id}")
public String handleTestRequest (@PathVariable("id") String id, Model model) {
if (!id.matches("\\d+")) {
model.addAttribute("msg", "id should only have digits");
return "error-page";
} else {
return "forward:/testFinal/" + id + "?attr=attrVal";
}
}
@RequestMapping("testFinal/{id}")
public String handleRequestFinal (@PathVariable("id") String id,
@RequestParam("attr") String attr,
Model model) {
model.addAttribute("id", id);
model.addAttribute("attr", attr);
return "my-page";
}
.............
}
Unlike with redirect:, attributes in the Model don't propagate automatically when forwarding, so in the example above we're preparing the URL manually
Using HttpServletRequest
Alternatively, we can use HttpServletRequest to pass any attributes to the target controller method:
package com.logicbig.example;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PathVariable;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestParam;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.support.RedirectAttributes;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.view.RedirectView;
import jakarta.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import java.util.Map;
@Controller
public class MyController {
.............
@RequestMapping(value = "test2/{id}")
public String handleTestRequest2 (@PathVariable("id") String id,
Model model, HttpServletRequest request) {
if (!id.matches("\\d+")) {
model.addAttribute("msg", "id should only have digits");
return "error-page";
} else {
request.setAttribute("attr", "attrVal");
return "forward:/testFinal2/" + id;
}
}
@RequestMapping("testFinal2/{id}")
public String handleRequestFinal2 (@PathVariable("id") String id,
HttpServletRequest request,
Model model) {
model.addAttribute("id", id);
model.addAttribute("attr", request.getAttribute("attr"));
return "my-page";
}
}
my-page.jsp
src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/views/my-page.jsp<%@ page language="java"
contentType="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%>
<html>
<body>
<p> id : ${id}</p>
<p> attr : ${attr}</p>
</body>
</html>
error-page.jsp
src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/views/error-page.jsp<%@ page language="java"
contentType="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"
pageEncoding="ISO-8859-1"%>
<html>
<body>
<p style="color:red;"> Error message : ${msg}</p>
</body>
</html>
Running the example
To try examples, run embedded Jetty (configured in pom.xml of example project below):
mvn jetty:run Enter the URL
http://localhost:8080/spring-forward-prefix/test/3
Integration Test
package com.logicbig.example;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.BeforeEach;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.test.context.junit.jupiter.web.SpringJUnitWebConfig;
import org.springframework.test.web.servlet.assertj.MockMvcTester;
import org.springframework.web.context.WebApplicationContext;
import static org.assertj.core.api.Assertions.assertThat;
@SpringJUnitWebConfig(MyWebConfig.class)
public class ControllerTest {
@Autowired
private WebApplicationContext wac;
private MockMvcTester mockMvcTester;
@BeforeEach
public void setup() {
this.mockMvcTester = MockMvcTester.from(this.wac);
}
@Test
public void testController() {
assertThat(this.mockMvcTester.get().uri("/test/5")
.exchange())
.hasForwardedUrl("/testFinal/5?attr=attrVal");
}
@Test
public void testController2() {
assertThat(this.mockMvcTester.get().uri("/test/a")
.exchange())
.model().containsEntry("msg", "id should only have digits");
assertThat(this.mockMvcTester.get().uri("/test/a")
.exchange())
.hasViewName("error-page");
}
@Test
public void testController3() {
assertThat(this.mockMvcTester.get().uri("/test2/6")
.exchange())
.hasForwardedUrl("/testFinal2/6");
}
}
mvn clean test -Dtest="ControllerTest" Output$ mvn clean test -Dtest="ControllerTest"
[INFO] Scanning for projects...
[INFO]
[INFO] -------------< com.logicbig.example:spring-forward-prefix >-------------
[INFO] Building spring-forward-prefix 1.0-SNAPSHOT
[INFO] from pom.xml
[INFO] --------------------------------[ war ]---------------------------------
[INFO]
[INFO] --- clean:3.2.0:clean (default-clean) @ spring-forward-prefix ---
[INFO] Deleting D:\example-projects\spring-mvc\spring-forward-prefix\target
[INFO]
[INFO] --- resources:3.3.1:resources (default-resources) @ spring-forward-prefix ---
[WARNING] Using platform encoding (UTF-8 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
[INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory D:\example-projects\spring-mvc\spring-forward-prefix\src\main\resources
[INFO]
[INFO] --- compiler:3.15.0:compile (default-compile) @ spring-forward-prefix ---
[INFO] Recompiling the module because of changed source code.
[INFO] Compiling 3 source files with javac [debug target 25] to target\classes
[INFO]
[INFO] --- resources:3.3.1:testResources (default-testResources) @ spring-forward-prefix ---
[WARNING] Using platform encoding (UTF-8 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!
[INFO] skip non existing resourceDirectory D:\example-projects\spring-mvc\spring-forward-prefix\src\test\resources
[INFO]
[INFO] --- compiler:3.15.0:testCompile (default-testCompile) @ spring-forward-prefix ---
[INFO] Recompiling the module because of changed dependency.
[INFO] Compiling 2 source files with javac [debug target 25] to target\test-classes
[INFO]
[INFO] --- surefire:3.2.5:test (default-test) @ spring-forward-prefix ---
[INFO] Using auto detected provider org.apache.maven.surefire.junitplatform.JUnitPlatformProvider
[WARNING] file.encoding cannot be set as system property, use <argLine>-Dfile.encoding=...</argLine> instead
[INFO]
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] T E S T S
[INFO] -------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Running com.logicbig.example.ControllerTest
[INFO] Tests run: 3, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 0.899 s -- in com.logicbig.example.ControllerTest
[INFO]
[INFO] Results:
[INFO]
[INFO] Tests run: 3, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0
[INFO]
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time: 3.371 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2026-08-07T06:32:22+08:00
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
INFO: Completed initialization in 1 ms
INFO: Completed initialization in 1 ms
INFO: Completed initialization in 0 ms
Example ProjectDependencies and Technologies Used: - spring-webmvc 7.0.6 (Spring Web MVC)
Version Compatibility: 3.2.9.RELEASE - 7.0.6 Version compatibilities of spring-webmvc with this example: Versions in green have been tested.
- jakarta.servlet-api 6.1.0 (Jakarta Servlet API documentation)
- spring-test 7.0.6 (Spring TestContext Framework)
- junit-jupiter-engine 6.0.3 (Module "junit-jupiter-engine" of JUnit)
- hamcrest 3.0 (Core API and libraries of hamcrest matcher framework)
- assertj-core 3.26.3 (Rich and fluent assertions for testing in Java)
- JDK 25
- Maven 3.9.11
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