Bind UUID in Spring MVC

The converter below is available in Spring Framework (core) since version 3.2.

org.springframework.core.convert.support.StringToUUIDConverter<String, java.util.UUID>

UUID is a class that cannot simply be instantiated. Assuming that it comes as a request parameter you should first annotate the argument with @RequestParam.

@RequestMapping("/MyController.myAction.mvc")
@ResponseBody
public String myAction(@RequestParam UUID id, String myParam)...

Now this expects a request parameter with the name id to be available in the request. The parameter will be converted to a UUID by the StringToUUIDConverter which is automatically registered by Spring.

---

Prior to the Spring 3.2

there was no StringToUUIDConverter so additionally you have to write and register converter by your own.

public class StringToUUIDConverter implements Converter<String, UUID> {
    public UUID convert(String source) {
        return UUID.fromString(source);
    }
}

Hook this class up to the ConversionService and you should have UUID conversion for request parameters. (This would also work if it was a request header, basically for everything that taps into the ConversionService). You also might want to have a Converter for the other-way (UUID -> String).

Hooking it up to Spring MVC is nicely explained in the reference guide (assuming you use xml config). But in short:

<mvc:annotation-driven conversion-service="conversionService"/>

<bean id="conversionService" class="org.springframework.format.support.FormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean">
    <property name="converters">
        <set>
            <bean class="org.company.converter.StringToUUIDConverter"/>
        </set>
    </property>
</bean>