Spring-boot return json and xml from controllers

Question

I have a spring-boot 1.1.7 application that uses Thymeleaf for much of the UI, so the response from my controllers hasn't really been a concern. However, now I need to provide a XML response when a user submits a request via URL.

Here is a typical Request:

http://localhost:9001/remote/search?sdnName=Victoria&address=123 Maple Ave 

Here is most of my gradle configuration:

project.ext {     springBootVersion = '1.1.7.RELEASE' }  dependencies {     compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web:$springBootVersion")     compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf")     compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-security")     compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-data-jpa:$springBootVersion")     compile("org.springframework.security:spring-security-web:4.0.0.M1")     compile("org.springframework.security:spring-security-config:4.0.0.M1")     compile('org.thymeleaf.extras:thymeleaf-extras-springsecurity3:2.1.1.RELEASE')     compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-actuator")     compile('com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat:jackson-dataformat-xml:2.5.0') } 

And here is my controller:

@Controller public class RemoteSearchController {      @Autowired     private SdnSearchService sdnSearchService;      @RequestMapping(value = "/remote/search", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces = MediaType.APPLICATION_XML_VALUE)     public List<Sdn> search(@ModelAttribute SdnSearch sdnSearch) {         List<Sdn> foundSdns = sdnSearchService.find( sdnSearch );         return foundSdns; } 

Here is my Object to be returned:

@Entity public class Sdn {      @Id     private long entNum;     private String sdnName; ... //getters & setters here } 

I am able to receive the request via REST client (such as CocoaREST) and handle it. But When I return the list of SDN i get the following exception, even though I do have Jackson & jackson-dataformat-xml on my classpath:

org.springframework.web.HttpMediaTypeNotAcceptableException: Could not find acceptable representation     at org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.RequestMappingInfoHandlerMapping.handleNoMatch(RequestMappingInfoHandlerMapping.java:229)     at org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.AbstractHandlerMethodMapping.lookupHandlerMethod(AbstractHandlerMethodMapping.java:301)     at org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.AbstractHandlerMethodMapping.getHandlerInternal(AbstractHandlerMethodMapping.java:248)     at org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.AbstractHandlerMethodMapping.getHandlerInternal(AbstractHandlerMethodMapping.java:57)     at org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.AbstractHandlerMapping.getHandler(AbstractHandlerMapping.java:299) 

My REST Client is including a Accept Header of "text/xml" (but in all honesty I would rather them not have to set this. Ideally any call to this Controller would always get XML, regardless of header being present).

Is there a way to handle this? I thought the Media Converters were included and just returned whatever the controller told them to?

SOLUTION: See below for the answer I posted.

Answer 1

I had the exact same problem and I found the solution on Spring documentation website : here

In synthesis, I added the following dependency to the pom.xml of my project :

<dependency>      <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat</groupId>      <artifactId>jackson-dataformat-xml</artifactId>  </dependency> 

Then I added the following code block to the class that the service had to return :

 import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;   @XmlRootElement  public class Greeting {...} 

And it worked.

Answer 2

SOLUTION: I used a combination of both answers below (thank you very much!). I am posting here in case anyone else needs help.

My modified controller:

@Controller public class RemoteSearchController {      @Autowired     private SdnSearchService sdnSearchService;      @RequestMapping(value = "/remote/search", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces = { "application/xml", "text/xml" }, consumes = MediaType.ALL_VALUE )     @ResponseBody     public SdnSearchResults search(@ModelAttribute SdnSearch sdnSearch) {         List<Sdn> foundSdns = sdnSearchService.find( sdnSearch );         SdnSearchResults results = new SdnSearchResults();         results.setSdns( foundSdns );         return results;     } } 

And on my client, I set the request headers:

Content-type: application/text Accept: text/xml I think ultimately the problem was that my client headers were not being set correctly, so I may not have had to make some of these changes. But I liked the idea of a SearchResults class containing a list of results:

@XmlRootElement public class SdnSearchResults {     private List<Sdn> sdns; ... }