CODEWITHSUNDEEP
springspring-mvc
Farhan
Farhan

Reputation: 431

Spring MVC controller to return view or JSON

Is it possible for a method in Spring Controller to be able to return either a JSON or a view based on some conditions?

Can someone please share examples.

Regards, Farhan

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1382

Answers (1)

Idriss Neumann
Idriss Neumann

Reputation: 3838

Here's one solution among others : you can use two methods in your Controller, one using the @ResponseBody annotation and returning a JSON value and one classical method returning a ModelAndView.

Both methods could use the same http endpoint with different parameters (query or header parameters). In my point of view, the cleaner way to route the request to the expected format is using Content-Type header with the following values : text/html and application/json (or a path extension .html or .json but I'd prefer the header solution).

To do that you can use the consumes attribute of the @RequestMapping annotation : https://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/javadoc-api/org/springframework/web/bind/annotation/RequestMapping.html

An even better design would be to separate your methods that return JSON in @RestController annoted classes with real restfull endpoints and your your classical MVC's methods with non-restfull endpoints (generally bad for the SEO) in @Controller annoted classes that are only reserved for MVC (and both controller's families can use the same business logic in @Service annoted classes that not expose http endpoints).

If you really want to use a single method and determine with some conditions the format of your output, I think that would be a really bad design for your http clients but it's still possible using ViewResolvers like Bart suggests in comments.

Upvotes: 1

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