Step-by-Step Guide to Setting Up Spring MVC with FreeMarker and the SSM Framework in IntelliJ IDEA

This article provides a detailed walkthrough for building a Java web application using the SSM (Spring, Spring MVC, MyBatis) stack, FreeMarker as the view engine, and Maven for dependency management.

Step 1 – Create a Maven project in IntelliJ IDEA : Open IntelliJ, select New Project → Maven , choose the appropriate JDK, and fill in GroupId and ArtifactId . The wizard also creates the initial project structure.

Step 2 – Configure Maven mirror to speed up dependency download. Add the following to settings.xml :

<mirror>
  <id>alimaven</id>
  <name>aliyun maven</name>
  <url>http://maven.aliyun.com/nexus/content/groups/public/</url>
  <mirrorOf>central</mirrorOf>
</mirror>

Step 3 – Add SSM dependencies in the project's pom.xml . The essential libraries include Spring 4.x, MyBatis 3.x, Log4j, FastJSON, Jackson, MySQL connector, DBCP, JSTL, and testing frameworks:

<properties>
    <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
    <spring.version>4.1.4.RELEASE</spring.version>
    <mybatis.version>3.2.8</mybatis.version>
    <slf4j.version>1.7.7</slf4j.version>
    <log4j.version>1.2.17</log4j.version>
    <jackson.version>2.5.0</jackson.version>
</properties>

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.mybatis</groupId>
        <artifactId>mybatis</artifactId>
        <version>${mybatis.version}</version>
    </dependency>
    ... (other Spring, MyBatis, database, and utility dependencies) ...
</dependencies>

Step 4 – Create configuration files :

• src/main/resources/jdbc.properties (database connection):

driver=com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
url=jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/project?useUnicode=true&characterEncoding=utf-8
username=root
password=123456
initialSize=0
maxActive=20
maxIdle=20
minIdle=1
maxWait=60000

• src/main/resources/log4j.properties (logging):

# Define log level
log4j.rootLogger=INFO,Console,File
log4j.appender.Console=org.apache.log4j.ConsoleAppender
log4j.appender.Console.Target=System.out
log4j.appender.Console.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.Console.layout.ConversionPattern=[%c] - %m%n

log4j.appender.File=org.apache.log4j.RollingFileAppender
log4j.appender.File.File=logs/ssm.log
log4j.appender.File.MaxFileSize=10MB
log4j.appender.File.Threshold=ALL
log4j.appender.File.layout=org.apache.log4j.PatternLayout
log4j.appender.File.layout.ConversionPattern=[%p] [%d{yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss}][%c]%m%n

• spring-mybatis.xml (Spring‑MyBatis integration):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
       xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.1.xsd
                           http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.1.xsd
                           http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-4.0.xsd">
    <context:component-scan base-package="com.springmvc" />
    <bean id="propertyConfigurer" class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer">
        <property name="location" value="classpath:jdbc.properties" />
    </bean>
    <bean id="dataSource" class="org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource" destroy-method="close">
        <property name="driverClassName" value="${driver}" />
        <property name="url" value="${url}" />
        <property name="username" value="${username}" />
        <property name="password" value="${password}" />
        <property name="initialSize" value="${initialSize}" />
        <property name="maxActive" value="${maxActive}" />
        <property name="maxIdle" value="${maxIdle}" />
        <property name="minIdle" value="${minIdle}" />
        <property name="maxWait" value="${maxWait}" />
    </bean>
    <bean id="sqlSessionFactory" class="org.mybatis.spring.SqlSessionFactoryBean">
        <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
        <property name="configLocation" value="classpath:/mybatis-config.xml" />
        <property name="mapperLocations" value="classpath:com/springmvc/mapping/*.xml" />
    </bean>
    <bean class="org.mybatis.spring.mapper.MapperScannerConfigurer">
        <property name="basePackage" value="com.springmvc.dao" />
        <property name="sqlSessionFactoryBeanName" value="sqlSessionFactory" />
    </bean>
    <bean id="transactionManager" class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DataSourceTransactionManager">
        <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
    </bean>
</beans>

• spring-mvc.xml (Spring MVC configuration):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
       xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans   http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.1.xsd
                           http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.1.xsd
                           http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc     http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-4.0.xsd">
    <context:component-scan base-package="com.springmvc.controller" />
    <bean id="mappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter" class="org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter">
        <property name="supportedMediaTypes">
            <list>
                <value>text/html;charset=UTF-8</value>
            </list>
        </property>
    </bean>
    <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter">
        <property name="messageConverters">
            <list>
                <ref bean="mappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter" />
            </list>
        </property>
    </bean>
    <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
        <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/page/" />
        <property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
    </bean>
    <bean id="multipartResolver" class="org.springframework.web.multipart.commons.CommonsMultipartResolver">
        <property name="defaultEncoding" value="utf-8" />
        <property name="maxUploadSize" value="10485760000" />
        <property name="maxInMemorySize" value="40960" />
    </bean>
</beans>

• web.xml (Servlet container configuration):

<!DOCTYPE web-app PUBLIC "-//Sun Microsystems, Inc.//DTD Web Application 2.3//EN" "http://java.sun.com/dtd/web-app_2_3.dtd" >
<web-app xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
          xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
          xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
          version="3.0">
    <display-name>Archetype Created Web Application</display-name>
    <context-param>
        <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
        <param-value>classpath:spring-mybatis.xml</param-value>
    </context-param>
    <context-param>
        <param-name>log4jRefreshInterval</param-name>
        <param-value>60000</param-value>
    </context-param>
    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.springframework.web.util.Log4jConfigListener</listener-class>
    </listener>
    <filter>
        <filter-name>encodingFilter</filter-name>
        <filter-class>org.springframework.web.filter.CharacterEncodingFilter</filter-class>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>encoding</param-name>
            <param-value>UTF-8</param-value>
        </init-param>
    </filter>
    <filter-mapping>
        <filter-name>encodingFilter</filter-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </filter-mapping>
    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
    </listener>
    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.springframework.web.util.IntrospectorCleanupListener</listener-class>
    </listener>
    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>mvc-dispatcher</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
            <param-value>classpath:spring-mvc.xml</param-value>
        </init-param>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>mvc-dispatcher</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>
    <session-config>
        <session-timeout>15</session-timeout>
    </session-config>
</web-app>

Step 5 – Implement a controller and a test case :

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/message")
public class MessageController {
    @Resource
    private MessageService messageService;

    @RequestMapping(value = "/show", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    @ResponseBody
    public Message helloMvc(HttpServletRequest request, Model model) {
        int id = Integer.parseInt(request.getParameter("id"));
        Message mes = this.messageService.getMessageById(id);
        model.addAttribute("message", mes);
        return mes;
    }
}

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(locations = {"classpath:spring-mybatis.xml"})
public class TestMybatis {
    private static Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(TestMybatis.class);

    @Resource
    private MessageService messageService;

    @Test
    public void test1() {
        Message message = messageService.getMessageById(1);
        logger.info("值：" + message.getCommand());
    }
}

After building and deploying the project to Tomcat, accessing the configured URL returns the expected JSON response, confirming that the SSM stack is fully integrated.

In summary, the process involves creating a Maven project, configuring the Maven mirror, adding SSM dependencies, setting up database and logging properties, defining Spring‑MyBatis and Spring MVC configuration files, writing a simple controller, and finally testing the application.