You have learned that DispatcherServlet is the thing that dispatches the request to the handler methods based on the request mapping, but in order to interpret the mappings defined in a request mapping, DispatcherServlet needs a HandlerMapping (org.springframework.web.servlet.HandlerMapping) implementation. DispatcherServlet consults with one or more HandlerMapping implementations to know which handler can handle the request. So HandlerMapping determines which Controller to call.

HandlerMapping interface provides the abstraction for mapping requests to handlers. The HandlerMapping implementations are able to inspect the request and come up with an appropriate Controller. Spring MVC provides many HandlerMapping implementations, and the one we are using to detect and interpret mappings from the @RequestMapping annotation is the RequestMappingHandlerMapping (org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation. RequestMappingHandlerMapping) class. To start using RequestMappingHandlerMapping...