With Spring can I make an optional path variable?

Question

You can't have optional path variables, but you can have two controller methods which call the same service code:

@RequestMapping(value = "/json/{type}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public @ResponseBody TestBean typedTestBean(
        HttpServletRequest req,
        @PathVariable String type,
        @RequestParam("track") String track) {
    return getTestBean(type);
}

@RequestMapping(value = "/json", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public @ResponseBody TestBean testBean(
        HttpServletRequest req,
        @RequestParam("track") String track) {
    return getTestBean();
}

If you are using Spring 4.1 and Java 8 you can use java.util.Optional which is supported in @RequestParam, @PathVariable, @RequestHeader and @MatrixVariable in Spring MVC -

@RequestMapping(value = {"/json/{type}", "/json" }, method = RequestMethod.GET)
public @ResponseBody TestBean typedTestBean(
    @PathVariable Optional<String> type,
    @RequestParam("track") String track) {      
    if (type.isPresent()) {
        //type.get() will return type value
        //corresponds to path "/json/{type}"
    } else {
        //corresponds to path "/json"
    }       
}

It's not well known that you can also inject a Map of the path variables using the @PathVariable annotation. I'm not sure if this feature is available in Spring 3.0 or if it was added later, but here is another way to solve the example:

@RequestMapping(value={ "/json/{type}", "/json" }, method=RequestMethod.GET)
public @ResponseBody TestBean typedTestBean(
    @PathVariable Map<String, String> pathVariables,
    @RequestParam("track") String track) {

    if (pathVariables.containsKey("type")) {
        return new TestBean(pathVariables.get("type"));
    } else {
        return new TestBean();
    }
}

You could use a :

@RequestParam(value="somvalue",required=false)

for optional params rather than a pathVariable

Spring 5 / Spring Boot 2 examples:

blocking

@GetMapping({"/dto-blocking/{type}", "/dto-blocking"})
public ResponseEntity<Dto> getDtoBlocking(
        @PathVariable(name = "type", required = false) String type) {
    if (StringUtils.isEmpty(type)) {
        type = "default";
    }
    return ResponseEntity.ok().body(dtoBlockingRepo.findByType(type));
}

reactive

@GetMapping({"/dto-reactive/{type}", "/dto-reactive"})
public Mono<ResponseEntity<Dto>> getDtoReactive(
        @PathVariable(name = "type", required = false) String type) {
    if (StringUtils.isEmpty(type)) {
        type = "default";
    }
    return dtoReactiveRepo.findByType(type).map(dto -> ResponseEntity.ok().body(dto));
}

Simplified example of Nicolai Ehmann's comment and wildloop's answer (works with Spring 4.3.3+), basically you can use required = false now:

  @RequestMapping(value = {"/json/{type}", "/json" }, method = RequestMethod.GET)
  public @ResponseBody TestBean testAjax(@PathVariable(required = false) String type) {
    if (type != null) {
      // ...
    }
    return new TestBean();
  }

Check this Spring 3 WebMVC - Optional Path Variables. It shows an article of making an extension to AntPathMatcher to enable optional path variables and might be of help. All credits to Sebastian Herold for posting the article.