Passing HttpServletResponse in Spring Boot controller method

Question

Came across spring boot code snippet which has HttpServletResponse passed has an argument in the controller method

public void someApiMethod(@RequestBody MyRequest req, HttpServletResponse response) {
    //some code
    response.setStatus(HttpStatus.NO_CONTENT.value());   
} 

The same could have been achieved using ResponseEntity and I feel there is no need of passing HttpServletResponse here.Kindly advise on which is the best approach and why, considering this code is written for rest API ?

Answer 1

Better solution is to use @ResponseStatus for there is no real reason to add non-API arguments, such as HttpServletResponse or ResponseEntity in controller methods. Only path variables, request params, request body & headers should be the set of controller parameters for majority of cases. Plus it is more readable, maintainable, and still is usable by Swagger etc.

@ResponseStatus(code = HttpStatus.NO_CONTENT)
public void someApiMethod(@RequestBody MyRequest req) {
    //some code
}