title: Is it possible to bind/convert the items in a list of a form to a specific type in a Spring Web MVC app?
body: <p>I'm building a Spring MVC app with Spring 3.0.3. I have data binding of my form working just fine, but one of the form fields is a list of items. Hypothetically speaking, my form object looks like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>public class MyForm {
  
      private String name;
      private List&lt;String&gt; items;
  
      public String getName() {
          return name;
      }
      public void setName( String value ) {
          name = value;
      }
  
      public List&lt;String&gt; getItems() {
          return items;
      }
      public void setItems( List&lt;String&gt; value ) {
          items = value;
      }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Lets say the form is being handled through a GET with a query string that looks like the following:</p>
  
  <pre><code>"/url?name=GroupName&amp;items=Item-1&amp;items=Item-2&amp;items=Item-3"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>As of now, the items property of my <code>MyForm</code> object binds just fine with a list of String values. What I'm curious about is if I can still achieve data binding if I were to change the items list type to something more specific, such as: </p>
  
  <pre><code>private List&lt;MyListItem&gt; items;
  </code></pre>