RedirectAttributes changes object id between controllers - spring-mvc

Question

I am using Spring MVC and Hibernate in my project. Also I have 2 controllers UserController and BookController where BookController redirects to the users page and I am passing a Book object in addition.
I've found I can do this with RedirectAttributes but the problem is that the id of the passed Book object is changed during this transition to user.id.
BookController.java
public class BookController {
#RequestMapping("/users/{user_id}/books/edit/{book_id}")
public String editBook(#PathVariable("user_id") int user_id, #PathVariable("book_id") int book_id, final RedirectAttributes redirectAttrs){
bookDetail = this.bookService.getBookById(book_id)
redirectAttrs.addFlashAttribute("bookDetail", bookDetail);
System.out.println(bookDetail);
return "redirect:/users/"+user_id;
}
}
Prints: id=8, title=Motylek, description=Some description, user_id=2.
UserController.java
public class UserController {
#RequestMapping("/users/{id}")
public String detailUser(#ModelAttribute("bookDetail") Book bookDetail, #PathVariable("id") int id, Model model){
User u = this.userService.getUserById(id);
model.addAttribute("user", u);
model.addAttribute("bookDetail", bookDetail);
System.out.println(bookDetail);
return "user";
}
}
Prints: id=2, title=Motylek, description=Some description, user_id=2.
Do you have and idea why this happens or is it a bug? Thanks.

Answer 1

I'm going to assume that your Book class has a property called id, ie. a getter or setter called getId() and setId(..).
When Spring parses the request URL, it stores path segments as declared in the corresponding #RequestMapping. So for
/your-app/users/2
and
#RequestMapping("/users/{id}")
It will store
id=2
as a request parameter.
Spring will then proceed to generate an argument for
#ModelAttribute("bookDetail") Book bookDetail
It will check the various request, session, servlet attributes for an entry with the name bookDetail. (If it doesn't find one, it will create one and add it to the request attributes.) In your case, it will have found the object in the HttpSession. It will then bind any request parameters to matching object properties. Since the parameter above is called id, it will be bound to the Book property id.
You should be good by changing
#RequestMapping("/users/{id}")
to
#RequestMapping("/users/{user_id}")
along with the corresponding #PathVariable.