Redirect just displaying link instead of taking user to link

Question

Here is the controller method which i'm trying to redirect from:

@GetMapping("/opensignup/{id}")
public String openSignUp(@PathVariable(value = "id") Long Id) {

    Tournament comp = tournamentRepository.findOne(Id);
    boolean b = true;
    comp.setSignUpOpen(b);

    return "redirect:/comp/" + Id;
}

I have another method (which is a post, if thats relevant) which successfully redirects to the correct page/controller with the same line:

   return "redirect:/comp/" + Id;

Instead of redirecting, it simply prints that link on the browser. (It prints it with the correct id.) Like this:

redirect:/comp/5

How do I get it to redirect instead of print?

Do you have a `@ResponseBody` annotation somewhere in your second called method? — Bennett Dams, Apr 24 '18 at 16:12
since you mento a browser, you can do it with JS. just catch the response and open it like `location.href= link`, if will post ans if you need after this — parlad, Apr 24 '18 at 16:15
@BennettDams no, but I just realised where I said it worked before the class has a @ conntroller annotation, but in this class it had @ RestController annotation. Could this be causing it? — Lucia, Apr 24 '18 at 16:25
@BennettDams It turns out the @ RestController was causing it, thanks. — Lucia, Apr 24 '18 at 16:29
Very gracious of you to spare me the downvote, magnanimous friend. I found no stack over flow questions with the same problem. I Quadruple checked the syntax of " return "redirect:/comp/" + Id;" compared to other stack over flow answers with similar redirects, I didn't see any point in linking to those since the syntax was correct. If referring to those would have helped someone answer my question, then my apologies. — Lucia, Apr 24 '18 at 21:16

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 24 '18 at 16:32

As stated in the comments, your second method is annotated with @RestController. While @Controller is meant to return views in the Spring context, @RestController is meant to return something that will be written to the response body directly (JSON in most cases).

@RestController is basically a combination of the @Controller AND a @ResponseBody annotation, whereby the second will try to map the POJO to JSON.

Redirect just displaying link instead of taking user to link

2 Answers2