Spring MVC vs. Spring REST

Dependencies

Spring Boot includes the necessary dependencies for us to get up and running with Spring REST using the Web starter dependency pack we included in our previous Boot builds.

Subdependencies of spring-boot-starter-web include: * spring-context - @Component, @Controller, etc. * spring-web - @RequestMapping, @RequestParam, @RequestBody, @ResponseBody, @RestController, etc. * spring-webmvc - DispatcherServlet, ModelAndView, ViewResolver, etc. * spring-boot-starter-json - This bundles the FasterXML jackson libraries for serializing and deserializing Java objects as XML, JSON, and several other formats.

URL Patterns

The extension .do is a convention for Spring MVC routes that return views.

• A path like getEmployees.do in our controller, for example, would return an HTML view of employees.

REST applications use a noun-based path pattern like /api/* or /rest/*.

• A path like /api/employees in our controller would return raw employee data, serialized as XML or JSON.

The return value of an MVC controller method is either a String view name, or a ModelAndView, that results in an HTML view being generated for the client.

@ResponseBody

In a REST API, a controller method returns data directly to the client.

The @ResponseBody annotation changes the way Spring handles a controller method's return value from trying to map it to a generated view, to returning a JSON representation of an object, or a text value representation of a primitive type.

Drill

1. Create a new Spring Starter Project called MyFirstRestProject
2. Make sure the project uses Gradle(Buildship 3.x)
3. Give your project values for group and description, and set the package to com.example.rest.

4. Add the Spring Web Starter dependency package.

5. Create a com.example.rest.controllers package.

6. Inside of this package, create a class named TestController and add the @Controller annotation above the class declaration.

7. Write a method named ping() that returns the String "pong":

   @RequestMapping(path = "ping", method = RequestMethod.GET)
   @ResponseBody
   public String ping() {
     return "pong";
   }
   

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