ifference between @RestController and @Controller

Difference between @RestController and @Controller Annotation in Spring MVC and REST

Read more: http://javarevisited.blogspot.com/2017/08/difference-between-restcontroller-and-controller-annotations-spring-mvc-rest.html#ixzz4sbGy2Glh

The @RestController annotation in Spring MVC is nothing but a combination of @Controller and @ResponseBody annotation. It was added into Spring 4.0 to make the development of RESTful Web Services in Spring framework easier. If you are familiar with the REST web services you know that the fundamental difference between a web application and a REST API is that the response from a web application is generally view (HTML + CSS + JavaScript) while REST API just return data in form of JSON or XML. This difference is also obvious in the @Controller and @RestController annotation. The job of @Controller is to create a Map of model object and find a view but @RestController simply return the object and object data is directly written into HTTP response as JSON or XML.

This can also be done with traditional @Controller and use @ResponseBody annotation but since this is the default behavior of RESTful Web services, Spring introduced @RestController which combined the behavior of @Controller and @ResponseBody together.

In short, following two code snippet are equal in Spring MVC:

@Controller
@ResponseBody
public class MVCController { 
   .. your logic
}

@RestController
public class RestFulController { 
  .... your logic
}

Obviously, everybody would like to declare just one annotation instead of two. Also, the @RestController is more obvious and telling than the previous two.

Read more: http://javarevisited.blogspot.com/2017/08/difference-between-restcontroller-and-controller-annotations-spring-mvc-rest.html#ixzz4sbGvgThC