Using URI template patterns

In the previous chapters, we saw how to map a particular URL to a controller method; for example, if the URL entered was http://localhost:8080/webstore/products, we mapped that request to the list method of ProductController and listed all the product information on the web page.

What if we want to list only a subset of the products based on category, for instance, we want to display only the products that fall under the category of laptops if the user entered the URL http://localhost:8080/webstore/products/laptop? Similarly, what if the URL is http://localhost:8080/webstore/products/tablet and we would like to show only tablets on the web page?

One way to do this is to have a separate request mapping method in the controller for every unique category. However, it won't scale if we have hundreds of categories; in that case, we'll have to write a hundred request mapping methods in the controller. So how do we do this in an elegant way?

We use the Spring MVC URI template...