Upload Files to Database with Spring MVC and Hibernate

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Last Updated on 02 July 2019   |   Print  Email


This tutorial walks you through the steps of building an interesting Spring MVC web application that allows the user to upload files from her computer to the server. The files are stored in database using Hibernate. Here’s a screenshot of the file upload form:

Upload Form

This sample application is built based on the combination of the following tutorials:

At a glance, we use the following technologies and pieces of software to develop the application:

The above list is our recommendation, you can use newer versions. However you can use similar versions if you already installed the different ones. Now, let’s see how to build the database file upload application with Spring and Hibernate in step-by-step.

 

1. Creating Database

Because our application is for uploading files to database so we need to create a database and a table in MySQL server. Execute the following SQL script to create a database called filedb with a table called files_upload:

CREATE DATABASE `filedb`;

CREATE TABLE `files_upload` (
  `upload_id` int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `file_name` varchar(128) DEFAULT NULL,
  `file_data` longblob,
  PRIMARY KEY (`upload_id`)
)

This ends up with the following database structure:

Database Structure

 

2. Configuring Maven Dependencies

Add the following dependencies declaration to the Maven’s project file - pom.xml:

 

NOTE: You can see the whole content of pom.xml file in the attached project.

 

3. Writing Upload Form

Code the upload page (Upload.jsp) as the following code snippet:

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8"
    pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
     "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>Spring MVC - Hibernate File Upload to Database Demo</title>
</head>
<body>
    <div align="center">
        <h1>Spring MVC - Hibernate File Upload to Database Demo</h1>
        <form method="post" action="doUpload" enctype="multipart/form-data">
            <table border="0">
                <tr>
                    <td>Pick file #1:</td>
                    <td><input type="file" name="fileUpload" size="50" /></td>
                </tr>
                <tr>
                    <td>Pick file #2:</td>
                    <td><input type="file" name="fileUpload" size="50" /></td>
                </tr>
                <tr>
                    <td colspan="2" align="center"><input type="submit" value="Upload" /></td>
                </tr>
            </table>
        </form>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

This JSP page simply displays two fields that allow the user to pick two files from her computer to upload.

 

4. Writing Model Class with JPA Annotations

We need to write a POJO class to represent an upload file. Create UploadFile.java file with the following code:

package net.codejava.fileupload.model;

import javax.persistence.Column;
import javax.persistence.Entity;
import javax.persistence.GeneratedValue;
import javax.persistence.Id;
import javax.persistence.Table;

@Entity
@Table(name = "FILES_UPLOAD")
public class UploadFile {
	private long id;
	private String fileName;
	private byte[] data;

	@Id
	@GeneratedValue
	@Column(name = "FILE_ID")
	public long getId() {
		return id;
	}

	public void setId(long id) {
		this.id = id;
	}

	@Column(name = "FILE_NAME")
	public String getFileName() {
		return fileName;
	}

	public void setFileName(String fileName) {
		this.fileName = fileName;
	}

	@Column(name = "FILE_DATA")
	public byte[] getData() {
		return data;
	}

	public void setData(byte[] data) {
		this.data = data;
	}
}

 As we can see, JPA annotations are used to map this model class to the database table, very straightforward.

 

5. Implementing DAO Classes

We need to implement DAO classes to save the upload files to database.

Declare an interface FileUploadDAO as the following code:

package net.codejava.fileupload.dao;

import net.codejava.fileupload.model.UploadFile;

public interface FileUploadDAO {
	void save(UploadFile uploadFile);
}

And here’s code of the implementation class:

package net.codejava.fileupload.dao;

import org.hibernate.SessionFactory;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Repository;
import org.springframework.transaction.annotation.Transactional;

import net.codejava.fileupload.model.UploadFile;

@Repository
public class FileUploadDAOImpl implements FileUploadDAO {
	@Autowired
	private SessionFactory sessionFactory;
	
	public FileUploadDAOImpl() {
	}

	public FileUploadDAOImpl(SessionFactory sessionFactory) {
		this.sessionFactory = sessionFactory;
	}

	@Override
	@Transactional
	public void save(UploadFile uploadFile) {
		sessionFactory.getCurrentSession().save(uploadFile);
	}
}

As we use Hibernate integration, the DAO code is very simple and minimal.

 

6. Configuring DAO and MultipartResolver Beans

Because the project is using Java-based configuration, add the following code for creating two new beans in the ApplicationContextConfig class:

NOTE: Other beans instantiation (mostly for Hibernate - Spring integration) is as same as the tutorial: Spring 4 and Hibernate 4 Integration Tutorial Part 2: Java-based Configuration

 

7. Coding Controller Class

The controller class connects everything together as it specifies workflow of the application. Code the HomeController class with the following content:

package net.codejava.fileupload.controller;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;

import net.codejava.fileupload.dao.FileUploadDAO;
import net.codejava.fileupload.model.UploadFile;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestParam;
import org.springframework.web.multipart.commons.CommonsMultipartFile;

/**
 * Handles requests for the file upload page.
 */
@Controller
public class HomeController {
	@Autowired
	private FileUploadDAO fileUploadDao;

	@RequestMapping(value = "/", method = RequestMethod.GET)
	public String showUploadForm(HttpServletRequest request) {
		return "Upload";
	}
	
    @RequestMapping(value = "/doUpload", method = RequestMethod.POST)
    public String handleFileUpload(HttpServletRequest request,
            @RequestParam CommonsMultipartFile[] fileUpload) throws Exception {
         
        if (fileUpload != null && fileUpload.length > 0) {
            for (CommonsMultipartFile aFile : fileUpload){
                 
                System.out.println("Saving file: " + aFile.getOriginalFilename());
                
                UploadFile uploadFile = new UploadFile();
                uploadFile.setFileName(aFile.getOriginalFilename());
                uploadFile.setData(aFile.getBytes());
                fileUploadDao.save(uploadFile);                
            }
        }
 
        return "Success";
    }	
}

Code of this controller class is pretty straightforward simple as well:

Code of the Success.jsp page:

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8"
    pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>Upload Done</title>
</head>
<body>
	<div align="center">
		<h1>Files have been uploaded successfully!</h1>
	</div>
</body>
</html>

 

8. Testing the Application

So far we have done all the coding part. Let’s test the application now. Make sure you deployed the application on Tomcat and the server is started. Type the following URL in your browser:

http://localhost:8080/fileupload

The upload page gets displayed as shown in the following screenshot:

Test Upload Page

Choose two files from your computer and hit Upload. If everything is going fine, you would see the following page:

Success Page

And don’t forget to check the database to see if the files are actually saved:

Database Table Verification

That’s it! You have built an interesting Spring-Hibernate web application for uploading files into database. For your convenience, we provide the sample project under the attachments section.

 

Related Java File Upload Tutorials:


About the Author:

is certified Java programmer (SCJP and SCWCD). He began programming with Java back in the days of Java 1.4 and has been passionate about it ever since. You can connect with him on Facebook and watch his Java videos on YouTube.

Attachments:
Download this file (SpringMvcHibernateFileUpload.zip)SpringMvcHibernateFileUpload.zip[Eclipse-Maven Project]36 kB