Spring's Web MVC framework is designed around a DispatcherServlet that dispatches requests to handlers, with configurable handler mappings, view resolution, locale and theme resolution as well as support for upload files. The default handler is a very simple Controller interface, just offering a ModelAndView handleRequest(request,response) method. This can already be used for application controllers, but you will prefer the included implementation hierarchy, consisting of, for example AbstractController, AbstractCommandController and SimpleFormController. Application controllers will typically be subclasses of those. Note that you can choose an appropriate base class: if you don't have a form, you don't need a form controller. This is a major difference to Struts