Want my spring controller to return a string without a view

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Return only string message from Spring MVC 3 Controller

My spring controller has a endpoint where I want to only:

1. set the http response code
2. return a string back, don't need to render a .jsp view page or anything.

So will want to set the http status code to 200 OK or 500 etc. And simply return a string like "OK".

How can I do this, or am I forced to render a .jsp view page?

Dave Newton · Accepted Answer · 2012-01-02T14:29:24.210

15

Use the @ResponseBody annotation:

@RequestMapping(value="/sayHello", method=GET)
@ResponseBody
public String whatever() {
    return "Hello";
}

See the @ResponseBody ref docs for further details.

You may be able to use the @ResponseStatus annotation to set the code rather than using the HttpServletResponse directly.

edited Jan 02 '12 at 14:29

answered Jan 02 '12 at 14:20

Dave Newton

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well I'm setting the status depending on the flow of code, thanks. – Blankman Jan 02 '12 at 15:10
@Blankman Yeah, you'll need the `HttpServletResponse` variety then. – Dave Newton Jan 02 '12 at 15:19
You need to add produces="text/plain" to the @RequestMapping other wise the Content-Type of the response will still remain text/html – Vivek Giri Feb 19 '15 at 10:55
@VivekGiri Which is fine, actually. But it should be added, yes. – Dave Newton Feb 19 '15 at 12:26

score 13 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 02 '12 at 14:22

No, you are not forced to use view. If you use more recent version of Spring, you may use @ResponseBody annotation. See documentation for reference.

Example:

@Controller
@RequestMapping(value = "/someUrl", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces="text/plain")
@ResponseBody
public String returnSimpleMessage() {    
    return "OK";
}

You could also use HttpServletResponse as a parameter to set desired HTTP status.

Want my spring controller to return a string without a view

2 Answers2