Spring MVC File Upload

Last Updated : 27 Aug, 2025

Spring MVC provides built-in multipart handling via the Jakarta Servlet API, so you can upload files using MultipartFile and StandardServletMultipartResolver. This article walks through enabling multipart in web.xml (or Java config), registering StandardServletMultipartResolver, building a controller to accept uploads, and managing files efficiently (images, documents, large files) with limits, validation, and storage options.

Pre-requisites:

Eclipse IDE (or any other IDE of your choice)
Apache Maven for dependency management
Java 11 or higher
Apache Tomcat 10 or higher (for deploying the application)

Steps to Create a Spring MVC File Uploading Project

Spring MVC framework provides support for CommonsMultipartResolver for uploading any kind of file for a web-based application. Here we will be creating a Spring MVC web application and configuring MultipartResolver to upload files (image) and also show them on the web.

Step 1: Create a Maven Web Application Project

Open Eclipse IDE and create a new Maven project. Select the maven-archetype-webapp archetype. Enter the Group Id (e.g., com.gfg) and Artifact Id (e.g., SpringMVCFileUpload). Click Finish to create the project.

Step 2: Project Structure

The project structure would look something like this:

Step 3: Add Dependencies in pom.xml

Let's start by adding some dependencies into the pom.xml already created after creating a maven project. The pom.xml defines all the dependencies that maven has to get and manage for you. We are going to add dependencies for Spring MVC, jakarta EE and file upload libraries.

pom.xml:

XML

<project xmlns="https://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="https://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="https://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 https://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

  <groupId>com.gfg</groupId>
  <artifactId>SpringMVCFileUpload</artifactId>
  <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <packaging>war</packaging>

  <name>SpringMVCFileUpload Maven Webapp</name>
  <url>http://www.example.com</url>

  <properties>
    <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
    <maven.compiler.source>11</maven.compiler.source>
    <maven.compiler.target>11</maven.compiler.target>
  </properties>

  <dependencies>
    <!-- Spring MVC -->
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
      <version>5.3.23</version>
    </dependency>

    <!-- Jakarta Servlet API -->
    <dependency>
      <groupId>jakarta.servlet</groupId>
      <artifactId>jakarta.servlet-api</artifactId>
      <version>5.0.0</version>
      <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>

    <!-- Jakarta JSTL -->
    <dependency>
      <groupId>jakarta.servlet.jsp.jstl</groupId>
      <artifactId>jakarta.servlet.jsp.jstl-api</artifactId>
      <version>2.0.0</version>
    </dependency>

    <!-- Apache Commons FileUpload -->
    <dependency>
      <groupId>commons-fileupload</groupId>
      <artifactId>commons-fileupload</artifactId>
      <version>1.5</version>
    </dependency>

    <!-- Apache Commons IO -->
    <dependency>
      <groupId>commons-io</groupId>
      <artifactId>commons-io</artifactId>
      <version>2.11.0</version>
    </dependency>

    <!-- JUnit for Testing -->
    <dependency>
      <groupId>junit</groupId>
      <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
      <version>4.13.2</version>
      <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>

  <build>
    <finalName>SpringMVCFileUpload</finalName>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.8.1</version>
        <configuration>
          <source>11</source>
          <target>11</target>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
        <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>3.3.1</version>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

Step 4: Configure web.xml

The web.xml file in the WEB-INF folder defines mapping with different URLs and servlets to handle requests for those URLs. In this configuration file, we have used Jakarta EE namespace and configure the DispatcherServlet.

web.xml:

XML

<web-app xmlns="https://jakarta.ee/xml/ns/jakartaee/"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="https://jakarta.ee/xml/ns/jakartaee/ https://jakarta.ee/xml/ns/jakartaee/web-app_5_0.xsd"
         version="5.0">

    <display-name>Spring MVC File Upload</display-name>

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>gfg</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
            <param-value>/WEB-INF/gfg-servlet.xml</param-value>
        </init-param>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
        <multipart-config>
            <max-file-size>5242880</max-file-size> <!-- 5 MB -->
            <max-request-size>20971520</max-request-size> <!-- 20 MB -->
            <file-size-threshold>0</file-size-threshold>
        </multipart-config>
    </servlet>

    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>gfg</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

Step 5: Configure gfg-servlet.xml

This is the gfg-servlet.xml file located in "/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/gfg.servlet.xml". This file handles all HTTP requests for web applications. The annotation-driven enable the spring @Controller function, resource-mapping helps in handling HTTP requests for all resources. The bean configuration helps in identifying and scanning the jsp located in the views folder. The component-scan locates and allocated beans according to the mentioned annotation. Also added a resource mapping to map all the resources to the view a page.

gfg-servlet.xml:

A bean with id as multipartResolver will help in instantiating the CommonsMultipartResolver.

XML

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
       xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc https://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context https://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

    <context:component-scan base-package="com.gfg" />
    <mvc:resources mapping="/resources/**" location="/WEB-INF/resources/" cache-period="31556926"/>
    <mvc:annotation-driven />

    <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
        <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/views/" />
        <property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
    </bean>

    <!-- Modern MultipartResolver -->
    <bean id="multipartResolver"
          class="org.springframework.web.multipart.support.StandardServletMultipartResolver"/>
</beans>

Step 6: Create the Controller

The UploadFileController class in the com.gfg.controller has was methods for two requests to be mapped. The upload method is a get mapping and simple redirects to the fileform.jsp view page. The fileUpload method sends a Post request and redirects the showupload page. This class has three parameters CommonsMultipartFile gets the uploaded file. The file is converted into a bytes array and saved into a file using FileOutputStream, the model param is used to add the file name as an attribute in the showupload.jsp file.

UploadFileController:

Java

package com.gfg.controller;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpSession;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PostMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestParam;
import org.springframework.web.multipart.MultipartFile;

@Controller
public class UploadFileController {

    @GetMapping("/upload")
    public String upload() {
        return "fileform";
    }

    @PostMapping("/uploadfile")
    public String fileUpload(@RequestParam("thisfile") MultipartFile file, HttpSession session, Model model) {
        if (file.isEmpty()) {
            model.addAttribute("message", "Please select a file to upload!");
            return "fileform";
        }

        try {
            String uploadPath = session.getServletContext().getRealPath("/") +
                    "WEB-INF" + File.separator + "resources" + File.separator + "image";
            File dir = new File(uploadPath);
            if (!dir.exists()) dir.mkdirs();

            File serverFile = new File(dir, file.getOriginalFilename());
            try (FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(serverFile)) {
                fos.write(file.getBytes());
            }

            model.addAttribute("imgName", file.getOriginalFilename());
            model.addAttribute("message", "File uploaded successfully!");

        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
            model.addAttribute("message", "File upload failed: " + e.getMessage());
        }

        return "showupload";
    }
}

Step 7: Create JSP Views

The fileform.jsp in the views folder defines the upload form with enctype as multipart/form-data. We've used bootstrap for the proper styling of the page.

fileform.jsp:

HTML

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <!-- Required meta tags -->
    <meta charset="utf-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, shrink-to-fit=no">

    <!-- Bootstrap CSS -->
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/[email protected]/dist/css/bootstrap.min.css" integrity="sha384-ggOyR0iXCbMQv3Xipma34MD+dH/1fQ784/j6cY/iJTQUOhcWr7x9JvoRxT2MZw1T" crossorigin="anonymous">

    <title>File uploader</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <h1>Upload File</h1>
    <form action="uploadfile" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
        <div class="form-group">
          <label for="formFile" class="form-label">Upload Your file</label>
          <input name="thisfile" class="form-control" type="file" id="formFile">
        </div>
        <button class="btn btn-secondary">Upload</button>
    </form>

    <!-- Optional JavaScript -->
    <!-- jQuery first, then Popper.js, then Bootstrap JS -->
    <script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-3.3.1.slim.min.js" integrity="sha384-q8i/X+965DzO0rT7abK41JStQIAqVgRVzpbzo5smXKp4YfRvH+8abtTE1Pi6jizo" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
    <script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/[email protected]/dist/umd/popper.min.js" integrity="sha384-UO2eT0CpHqdSJQ6hJty5KVphtPhzWj9WO1clHTMGa3JDZwrnQq4sF86dIHNDz0W1" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
    <script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/[email protected]/dist/js/bootstrap.min.js" integrity="sha384-JjSmVgyd0p3pXB1rRibZUAYoIIy6OrQ6VrjIEaFf/nJGzIxFDsf4x0xIM+B07jRM" crossorigin="anonymous"></script>
  </body>
</html>

The showupload.jsp page displays the uploaded image using jsp to map the image URL.

showupload.jsp:

HTML

<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8"
    pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<%@ taglib prefix="c" uri="http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/index.html" %>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>Insert title here</title>
</head>
<body>

    <h1>File Uploaded</h1>

    <img src="<c:url value="resources/image/${imgName}"/>"/>
</body>
</html>

Note: After adding all the classes and configuration file, the project structure should look something like this:

Note: Before running the application, you need to manually create a folder named image inside the WEB-INF/resources directory. This folder will be used to store the uploaded files (e.g., images). If the folder does not exist, the application will throw an error when trying to save the uploaded file.

Step 8: Run the Application

Now it's time to run your project, start the Tomcat Server and run your application, now type "http://localhost:8080/SpringMVCFileUpload/upload" in any browser.

Output:

The below image demonstrates a file upload form in a Spring MVC application where users can select and upload a file.

Upload the image and click on upload this will redirect you to the showupload page

Now, you will see your uploaded image.

So we have created a Spring MVC web application with an upload form and displayed the uploaded image on the web.

ashutosh44

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Article Tags :

Spring MVC File Upload

Steps to Create a Spring MVC File Uploading Project

Step 1: Create a Maven Web Application Project

Step 2: Project Structure

Step 3: Add Dependencies in pom.xml

pom.xml:

Step 4: Configure web.xml

web.xml:

Step 5: Configure gfg-servlet.xml

gfg-servlet.xml:

Step 6: Create the Controller

Step 7: Create JSP Views

showupload.jsp:

Step 8: Run the Application

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