Spring Boot has a number of starters that include Spring MVC. Note that some starters include a dependency on Spring MVC rather than include it directly. This section answers common questions about Spring MVC and Spring Boot.
Any Spring @RestController
in a Spring Boot application should render JSON response by
default as long as Jackson2 is on the classpath, as shown in the following example:
@RestController public class MyController { @RequestMapping("/thing") public MyThing thing() { return new MyThing(); } }
As long as MyThing
can be serialized by Jackson2 (true for a normal POJO or Groovy
object), then localhost:8080/thing
serves a JSON representation of it by
default. Note that, in a browser, you might sometimes see XML responses, because browsers
tend to send accept headers that prefer XML.
If you have the Jackson XML extension (jackson-dataformat-xml
) on the classpath, you
can use it to render XML responses. The previous example that we used for JSON would
work. To use the Jackson XML renderer, add the following dependency to your project:
<dependency> <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat</groupId> <artifactId>jackson-dataformat-xml</artifactId> </dependency>
If Jackson’s XML extension is not available, JAXB (provided by default in the JDK) is
used, with the additional requirement of having MyThing
annotated as
@XmlRootElement
, as shown in the following example:
@XmlRootElement public class MyThing { private String name; // .. getters and setters }
To get the server to render XML instead of JSON, you might have to send an
Accept: text/xml
header (or use a browser).
Spring MVC (client and server side) uses HttpMessageConverters
to negotiate content
conversion in an HTTP exchange. If Jackson is on the classpath, you already get the
default converter(s) provided by Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder
, an instance of which
is auto-configured for you.
The ObjectMapper
(or XmlMapper
for Jackson XML converter) instance (created by
default) has the following customized properties:
MapperFeature.DEFAULT_VIEW_INCLUSION
is disabledDeserializationFeature.FAIL_ON_UNKNOWN_PROPERTIES
is disabledSerializationFeature.WRITE_DATES_AS_TIMESTAMPS
is disabledSpring Boot also has some features to make it easier to customize this behavior.
You can configure the ObjectMapper
and XmlMapper
instances by using the environment.
Jackson provides an extensive suite of simple on/off features that can be used to
configure various aspects of its processing. These features are described in six enums (in
Jackson) that map onto properties in the environment:
Enum | Property | Values |
---|---|---|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
For example, to enable pretty print, set spring.jackson.serialization.indent_output=true
.
Note that, thanks to the use of relaxed binding, the case of indent_output
does not have to match the case of the
corresponding enum constant, which is INDENT_OUTPUT
.
This environment-based configuration is applied to the auto-configured
Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder
bean and applies to any mappers created by
using the builder, including the auto-configured ObjectMapper
bean.
The context’s Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder
can be customized by one or more
Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilderCustomizer
beans. Such customizer beans can be ordered
(Boot’s own customizer has an order of 0), letting additional customization be applied
both before and after Boot’s customization.
Any beans of type com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.Module
are automatically registered
with the auto-configured Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder
and are applied to any ObjectMapper
instances that it creates. This provides a global mechanism for contributing custom
modules when you add new features to your application.
If you want to replace the default ObjectMapper
completely, either define a @Bean
of
that type and mark it as @Primary
or, if you prefer the builder-based
approach, define a Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder
@Bean
. Note that, in either case,
doing so disables all auto-configuration of the ObjectMapper
.
If you provide any @Beans
of type MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter
,
they replace the default value in the MVC configuration. Also, a convenience bean of type
HttpMessageConverters
is provided (and is always available if you use the default MVC
configuration). It has some useful methods to access the default and user-enhanced
message converters.
See the “Section 78.4, “Customize the @ResponseBody Rendering”” section and the
WebMvcAutoConfiguration
source code for more details.
Spring uses HttpMessageConverters
to render @ResponseBody
(or responses from
@RestController
). You can contribute additional converters by adding beans of the
appropriate type in a Spring Boot context. If a bean you add is of a type that would have
been included by default anyway (such as MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter
for JSON
conversions), it replaces the default value. A convenience bean of type
HttpMessageConverters
is provided and is always available if you use the default MVC
configuration. It has some useful methods to access the default and user-enhanced message
converters (For example, it can be useful if you want to manually inject them into a
custom RestTemplate
).
As in normal MVC usage, any WebMvcConfigurer
beans that you provide can also
contribute converters by overriding the configureMessageConverters
method. However, unlike
with normal MVC, you can supply only additional converters that you need (because Spring
Boot uses the same mechanism to contribute its defaults). Finally, if you opt out of the
Spring Boot default MVC configuration by providing your own @EnableWebMvc
configuration,
you can take control completely and do everything manually by using
getMessageConverters
from WebMvcConfigurationSupport
.
See the
WebMvcAutoConfiguration
source code for more details.
Spring Boot embraces the Servlet 3 javax.servlet.http.Part
API to support uploading
files. By default, Spring Boot configures Spring MVC with a maximum size of 1MB per
file and a maximum of 10MB of file data in a single request. You may override these
values, the location to which intermediate data is stored (for example, to the /tmp
directory), and the threshold past which data is flushed to disk by using the properties
exposed in the MultipartProperties
class. For example, if you want to specify that
files be unlimited, set the spring.servlet.multipart.max-file-size
property to -1
.
The multipart support is helpful when you want to receive multipart encoded file data as
a @RequestParam
-annotated parameter of type MultipartFile
in a Spring MVC controller
handler method.
See the
MultipartAutoConfiguration
source for more details.
![]() | Note |
---|---|
It is recommended to use the container’s built-in support for multipart uploads rather than introducing an additional dependency such as Apache Commons File Upload. |
By default, all content is served from the root of your application (/
). If you
would rather map to a different path, you can configure one as follows:
spring.mvc.servlet.path=/acme
If you have additional servlets you can declare a @Bean
of type Servlet
or
ServletRegistrationBean
for each and Spring Boot will register them transparently to the
container. Because servlets are registered that way, they can be mapped to a sub-context
of the DispatcherServlet
without invoking it.
Configuring the DispatcherServlet
yourself is unusual but if you really need to do it, a
@Bean
of type DispatcherServletPath
must be provided as well to provide the path of
your custom DispatcherServlet
.
The easiest way to take complete control over MVC configuration is to provide your own
@Configuration
with the @EnableWebMvc
annotation. Doing so leaves all MVC
configuration in your hands.
A ViewResolver
is a core component of Spring MVC, translating view names in
@Controller
to actual View
implementations. Note that ViewResolvers
are mainly
used in UI applications, rather than REST-style services (a View
is not used to render
a @ResponseBody
). There are many implementations of ViewResolver
to choose from, and
Spring on its own is not opinionated about which ones you should use. Spring Boot, on the
other hand, installs one or two for you, depending on what it finds on the classpath and
in the application context. The DispatcherServlet
uses all the resolvers it finds in
the application context, trying each one in turn until it gets a result, so, if you
add your own, you have to be aware of the order and in which position your resolver is
added.
WebMvcAutoConfiguration
adds the following ViewResolvers
to your context:
InternalResourceViewResolver
named ‘defaultViewResolver’. This one locates
physical resources that can be rendered by using the DefaultServlet
(including static
resources and JSP pages, if you use those). It applies a prefix and a suffix to the
view name and then looks for a physical resource with that path in the servlet context
(the defaults are both empty but are accessible for external configuration through
spring.mvc.view.prefix
and spring.mvc.view.suffix
). You can override it by
providing a bean of the same type.BeanNameViewResolver
named ‘beanNameViewResolver’. This is a useful member of the
view resolver chain and picks up any beans with the same name as the View
being
resolved. It should not be necessary to override or replace it.ContentNegotiatingViewResolver
named ‘viewResolver’ is added only if there are
actually beans of type View
present. This is a ‘master’ resolver, delegating to all
the others and attempting to find a match to the ‘Accept’ HTTP header sent by the
client. There is a useful
blog about
ContentNegotiatingViewResolver
that you might like to study to learn more, and you
might also look at the source code for detail. You can switch off the auto-configured
ContentNegotiatingViewResolver
by defining a bean named ‘viewResolver’.ThymeleafViewResolver
named
‘thymeleafViewResolver’. It looks for resources by surrounding the view name with a
prefix and suffix. The prefix is spring.thymeleaf.prefix
, and the suffix is
spring.thymeleaf.suffix
. The values of the prefix and suffix default to
‘classpath:/templates/’ and ‘.html’, respectively. You can override
ThymeleafViewResolver
by providing a bean of the same name.FreeMarkerViewResolver
named
‘freeMarkerViewResolver’. It looks for resources in a loader path (which is
externalized to spring.freemarker.templateLoaderPath
and has a default value of
‘classpath:/templates/’) by surrounding the view name with a prefix and a suffix. The
prefix is externalized to spring.freemarker.prefix
, and the suffix is externalized to
spring.freemarker.suffix
. The default values of the prefix and suffix are empty and
‘.ftl’, respectively. You can override FreeMarkerViewResolver
by providing a bean
of the same name.groovy-templates
is on your classpath), you
also have a GroovyMarkupViewResolver
named ‘groovyMarkupViewResolver’. It looks for
resources in a loader path by surrounding the view name with a prefix and suffix
(externalized to spring.groovy.template.prefix
and spring.groovy.template.suffix
).
The prefix and suffix have default values of ‘classpath:/templates/’ and ‘.tpl’,
respectively. You can override GroovyMarkupViewResolver
by providing a bean of the
same name.For more detail, see the following sections: