Return only string message from Spring MVC 3 Controller

With Spring 4, if your Controller is annotated with @RestController instead of @Controller, you don't need the @ResponseBody annotation.

The code would be

@RestController public class FooController { @RequestMapping(value="/controller", method=GET) public String foo() { return "Response!"; } } 

You can find the Javadoc for @RestController here

Although, @Tomasz is absolutely right there is another way:

@RequestMapping(value="/controller", method=GET) public void foo(HttpServletResponse res) { try { PrintWriter out = res.getWriter(); out.println("Hello, world!"); out.close(); } catch (IOException ex) { ... } } 

but the first method is preferable. You can use this method if you want to return response with custom content type or return binary type (file, etc...);

This is just a note for those who might find this question later, but you don't have to pull in the response to change the content type. Here's an example below to do just that:

@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET, value="/controller") public ResponseEntity<byte[]> displayUploadedFile() { HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders(); String disposition = INLINE; String fileName = ""; headers.setContentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_OCTET_STREAM); //Load your attachment here if (Arrays.equals(Constants.HEADER_BYTES_PDF, contentBytes)) { headers.setContentType(MediaType.valueOf("application/pdf")); fileName += ".pdf"; } if (Arrays.equals(Constants.HEADER_BYTES_TIFF_BIG_ENDIAN, contentBytes) || Arrays.equals(Constantsr.HEADER_BYTES_TIFF_LITTLE_ENDIAN, contentBytes)) { headers.setContentType(MediaType.valueOf("image/tiff")); fileName += ".tif"; } if (Arrays.equals(Constants.HEADER_BYTES_JPEG, contentBytes)) { headers.setContentType(MediaType.IMAGE_JPEG); fileName += ".jpg"; } //Handle other types if necessary headers.add("Content-Disposition", , disposition + ";filename=" + fileName); return new ResponseEntity<byte[]>(uploadedBytes, headers, HttpStatus.OK); } 

What about:

PrintWriter out = response.getWriter(); out.println("THE_STRING_TO_SEND_AS_RESPONSE"); return null; 

This woks for me.

For outputing String as text/plain use:

@RequestMapping(value="/foo", method=RequestMethod.GET, produces="text/plain") @ResponseBody public String foo() { return "bar"; } 

@Controller public class HelloController { @RequestMapping(value = "/", method = RequestMethod.GET) ResponseEntity<String> sayHello() { return ResponseEntity.ok("Hello"); } } 

There are two possible solution

1. Use @Controller and @ResponseBody, to combine HTML page and the string message for different functions

   @Controller @RequestMapping({ "/user/registration"}) public class RegistrationController { @GetMapping public String showRegistrationForm(Model model) { model.addAttribute("user", new UserDto()); return "registration"; //Returns the registration.html } @PostMapping @ResponseBody public String registerUserAccount(@Valid final UserDto accountDto, final HttpServletRequest request) { LOGGER.debug("Registering user account with information: {}", accountDto); return "Successfully registered" // Returns the string } 

2. Use @RestController to return String message. In this case, you cannot have functions which returns HTML page.

    @RestController @RequestMapping({ "/user/registration"}) public class RegistrationController { @PostMapping public String registerUserAccount(@Valid @RequestBody final UserDto accountDto, final HttpServletRequest request) { LOGGER.debug("Registering user account with information: {}", accountDto); return "Successfully registered" // Returns the string } 

Simplest solution:

Just add quotes, I really don't know why it's not auto-implemented by Spring boot when response type defined as application/json, but it works great.

@PostMapping("/create") public String foo() { String result = "something" return "\"" + result + "\""; } 

@ResponseBody @RequestMapping(value="/get-text", produces="text/plain") public String myMethod() { return "Response!"; } 

• You see that @ResponseBody ?

It's telling that the method returns some text and not to interpret it as a view etc.

• You see that produces="text/plain" ?

It's just a good practice as it tells what will be returned from the method :)