Power of Spring's @ModelAttribute and @SessionAttributes

The Spring Framework is an open source application framework that aims to make J2EE development easier. Unlike single-tier frameworks, such as Struts or Hibernate, Spring aims to help structure whole applications in a consistent, productive manner, pulling together best-of-breed single-tier frameworks to create a coherent architecture.

How does @ModelAttribute work?
@ModelAttribute is a Spring-MVC specific annotation used for preparing the model data. It is also used to define the command object that would be bound with the HTTP request data. The annotation works only if the class is a Controller class (i.e. annotated with @Controller).

ModelAttribute can be applied on both methods as well as method-parameters. It accepts an optional "value", which indicates the name of the attribute. If no value is supplied to the annotation, then the value would be defaulted to the return type name in case of methods and parameter type name in case of method-parameters.