In Spring MVC, we use the @RestController annotation to develop RESTful Webservices, i.e. web controllers that read/write JSON/XML data based on standard HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE…). Let’s see a typical example:

package net.codejava.product;

import java.util.List;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;

@RestController
public class ProductRestController {

	@Autowired ProductService service;
	
	@GetMapping("/products")
	public List<Product> getProducts() {
		return service.getProducts();
	}
}

In this example, the class is annotated with @RestController annotation which is itself annotated with @Controller and @ResponseBody annotations. That means:

- the @Controller annotation allows the controller to handle web requests with handler methods annotated with @RequestMapping annotation.

- the @ResponseBody annotation allows the object returned by the handler method to be serialized to JSON/XML in the response body. In the above example, the object of type List<Product> will be serialized to an array of JSON objects, with each representing product information, something like this:

[
  {
    "id": 1,
    "name": "iPhone 17",
    "price": 1700
  },
  {
    "id": 2,
    "name": "Kindle Fire",
    "price": 230
  },
  {
    "id": 3,
    "name": "Samsung Galaxy Tab",
    "price": 490
  }
]

 

That’s some code examples that help you understand the use of @RestController annotation in Spring framework, which is for developing RESTful Webservices. To see the coding in a real life project, watch the following video:

 

Reference:

Annotation Interface RestController (Spring Docs)

 

Other Spring Annotations:

• Spring @Service Annotation Examples
• Spring @Component Annotation Examples
• Spring @Repository Annotation Examples
• Spring @Configuration Annotation Examples
• Spring @Controller Annotation Examples