Open Source For Geeks: Sending xml(JAXB) and json(Jackson) response with Spring MVC @ResponseBody annotation

Saturday, 14 January 2017

Sending xml(JAXB) and json(Jackson) response with Spring MVC @ResponseBody annotation

Background

In some of our earlier posts we saw examples of how Spring controllers work.

In those examples we returned a view name from controller method and subsequently corresponding JSP was returned and rendered. In this post we will see how we can send a xml or a json response instead of a JSP.

Sending xml(JAXB) and json(Jackson) response with Spring MVC @ResponseBody annoatation

Your controller would look like below -

package com.osfg.controllers;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;
import org.springframework.http.MediaType;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ResponseBody;

import com.osfg.model.Employee;

/**
 * 
 * @author athakur
 * Controller to handle employee information
 */
@Controller
public class EmployeeController {

    Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(EmployeeController.class);

    
    @RequestMapping(value = "/getEmployeeInfoData", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces = {MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE, MediaType.APPLICATION_XML_VALUE})
    @ResponseBody
    public Employee getEmployeeInfo(HttpServletRequest request) {
        logger.debug("Receive GET request for employee data information");
        Employee empForm = new Employee();
        empForm.setName("Aniket Thakur");
        empForm.setAge(25);
        return empForm;
    }

}

Most of annotations and code you would already know from previous examples. New thing here is the produces field which is set to

MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE,
MediaType.APPLICATION_XML_VALUE

which mean your controller method can give response in json or xml.

NOTE : Spring framework matches this produces field with accepts header of incoming request.

and your Employee model object would look like -

package com.osfg.model;

import java.io.Serializable;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

/**
 * 
 * @author athakur
 * Model class for Employee
 */
@XmlRootElement(name = "employee")
public class Employee implements Serializable {
    
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
    
    private String name;
    private int age;
     
    @XmlElement
    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }
    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
    
    @XmlElement
    public int getAge() {
        return age;
    }
    public void setAge(int age) {
        this.age = age;
    }
     
}

Notice the annotations used. Those are required for XML transformation by JAXB library.

NOTE : Don't forget to add <mvc:annotation-driven/> tag in your spring configuration file.

Once above code and configurations are in place all you have to do is put JAXB and jackson jars on classpath. I am using ivy so add following dependency on youe ivy xml -

<dependency org="com.fasterxml.jackson.core" name="jackson-databind" rev="2.8.5"/>

NOTE : I am using Java 8. JAXB is inbuilt in java since java 7. So no need to explicitly add it.