Hi I am trying to authenticate the user but seems like its calling a jsp page instead of another controller mapping.

My dispatcher servlet is

<bean id="dataSource"
    class="org.springframework.jdbc.datasource.DriverManagerDataSource">
    <property name="driverClassName" value="${database.driver}" />
    <property name="url" value="${database.url}" />
    <property name="username" value="${database.user}" />
    <property name="password" value="${database.password}" />
</bean>

<bean id="sessionFactory"
    class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.annotation.AnnotationSessionFactoryBean">
    <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
    <property name="annotatedClasses">
        <list>
            <value>com.beingjavaguys.domain.User</value>
            <value>com.beingjavaguys.domain.Chat</value>
        </list>
    </property>
    <property name="hibernateProperties">
        <props>
            <prop key="hibernate.dialect">${hibernate.dialect}</prop>
            <prop key="hibernate.show_sql">${hibernate.show_sql}</prop>
        </props>
    </property>
</bean>

<bean id="hibernateTransactionManager"
    class="org.springframework.orm.hibernate3.HibernateTransactionManager">
    <property name="sessionFactory" ref="sessionFactory" />
</bean>

My web.xml is

dispatcher org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet 1

<servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
    <url-pattern>*.html</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

<welcome-file-list>
    <welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
</welcome-file-list>

and my controller is

@RequestMapping(value="/authenticate",method=RequestMethod.POST)
    public ModelAndView getAuthenticateResult(@ModelAttribute("user") User user,
            BindingResult result) {
        if(userService.authenticate(user))
        {
            return new ModelAndView("/userList");
        }
        else{
        return new ModelAndView("Login");
        }
    }

@RequestMapping(value="/userList", method=RequestMethod.GET)
    public ModelAndView getUserList() {
        Map<String, Object> model = new HashMap<String, Object>();
        model.put("chat", userService.getChat());
        return new ModelAndView("UserDetails", model);

    }

I am calling authenticate.html from my login file using POST method but my problem is this error

HTTP Status 404 - /Spring-hibernate-integration-helloworld/WEB-INF/view/userList.jsp

type Status report

message /Spring-hibernate-integration-helloworld/WEB-INF/view/userList.html.jsp

description The requested resource is not available.

Why is it searching for the jsp file instead of redirecting it to a controller method? But if i use redirect:/userList.html it works then.Whats the logic behind it?

If you return a string that is interpreted as a name of a view to render. The name of the view is passed no the a ViewResolver (in your case probably an InternalResourceViewResolver) which will generate an (internal) URL to forward to. In this case that will be a JSP.

Now the redirect: and forward: prefixes are 2 special cases. The redirect: will result in a client side redirect to that URL, which in turn will call your controller due to your configuration. A forward: is handled on the server side and not the client side.