Implementing the Sample Flow

Now the infrastructure and configurations are complete, and we can start to implement the add contact flow. In the following sections, we will go through the steps to implement the flow. Various steps, including the flow definition, template view, various contact views, controller class, backing bean classes, and so on, will be discussed.

Define the Flow Definition

Let's begin with defining the contact application flow, which was illustrated in Figure 18-7. As discussed in the configuration section, the flow definition file is /WEB-INF/flows/contacts/flow.xml. There is a convenient way to create a web flow definition file in STS. Just right-click the contacts folder, choose New, and then choose Spring Web Flow Definition File. Listing 18-5 shows the flow definition.