java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: No converter found for return value of type

Question

The problem was that one of the nested objects in Foo didn't have any getter/setter

Add the below dependency to your pom.xml:

 <dependency>
    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackson-databind</artifactId>
    <version>2.10.0.pr3</version>
</dependency>

Add the getter/setter missing inside the bean mentioned in the error message.

Use @ResponseBody and getter/setter. Hope it will solve your issue.

@RequestMapping(value = "/bar/foo", method = RequestMethod.GET)
@ResponseBody
public ResponseEntity<foo> foo() {

and update your mvc-dispatcher-servlet.xml:

<mvc:annotation-driven>
     <mvc:message-converters>
            <bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.StringHttpMessageConverter"/>
            <bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter"/>
   </mvc:message-converters>
</mvc:annotation-driven>

The issue occurred in my case because spring framework couldn't fetch the properties of nested objects. Getters/Setters is one way of solving. Making the properties public is another quick and dirty solution to validate if this is indeed the problem.

The answer written by @Marc is also valid. But the concrete answer is the Getter method is required. You don't even need a Setter.

I had the very same problem, and unfortunately it could not be solved by adding getter methods, or adding jackson dependencies.

I then looked at Official Spring Guide, and followed their example as given here - https://spring.io/guides/gs/actuator-service/ - where the example also shows the conversion of returned object to JSON format.

I then again made my own project, with the difference that this time I also added the dependencies and build plugins that's present in the pom.xml file of the Official Spring Guide example I mentioned above.

The modified dependencies and build part of XML file looks like this!

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
        <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

You can see the same in the mentioned link above.

And magically, atleast for me, it works. So, if you have already exhausted your other options, you might want to try this out, as was the case with me.

Just a side note, it didn't work for me when I added the dependencies in my previous project and did Maven install and update project stuff. So, I had to again make my project from scratch. I didn't bother much about it as mine is an example project, but you might want to look for that too!