Return JSON or View from Spring MVC Controller

Question

I am wanting to return a view from a Spring MVC Controller depending on logic. If an error occurs I want to return JSON, if not, an HTML view. This is like ASP.NET MVC ActionResult, where you can return any kind of view and it will render the result, and it won't depend on the content-type being sent in the request. I can't find any examples of this.

Answer 1

I achieved this with the following.

@RequestMapping(value="/users", method=RequestMethod.POST)
public Object index(@RequestBody SearchUsersViewModel model, HttpServletResponse response) {

    model.setList(userService.getUsers(model));

    if(true)
    {
        return new ModelAndView("controls/tables/users", "model", model);
    }
    else
    {
        return JsonView.Render(model, response);
    }    
}

JsonView.java

public class JsonView {

    public static ModelAndView Render(Object model, HttpServletResponse response)
    {
        MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter jsonConverter = new MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter();

        MediaType jsonMimeType = MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON;


        try {
            jsonConverter.write(model, jsonMimeType, new ServletServerHttpResponse(response));
        } catch (HttpMessageNotWritableException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

        return null;
    }
}

JS Function that makes the call

config.request = $
                .ajax({
                    url : url,
                    data : $.toJSON(def.data),
                    type : def.type,
                    dataType : def.dataType,
                    processData : true,
                    contentType : def.contentType,
                    success : function(data) {

                        try {
                            var json = data;
                            if (typeof data === "String" || typeof data == "string") {
                                json = (eval('(' + data + ')'));
                            }
                            if ('object' === typeof json) {
                                if (json.Validation && json.Validation.Errors.length > 0) {

                                    $.each(json.Validation.Errors, function() {
                                        // Error Code Check
                                    });

                                    // Error Callback
                                    if (typeof (def.errorCallback) == 'function') {
                                        def.errorCallback(json);
                                    }
                                } else {
                                    def.callback(data);
                                }
                            } else {
                                def.callback(data);
                            }
                        } catch (e) {
                            def.callback(data);
                            // Hide Loading
                        }
                    },
                    error : function(data) {


                    }
                });