Use @RestController instead of @Controller + @ResponseBody

ID

java.spring_use_restcontroller

Severity

low

Remediation Complexity

trivial

Remediation Risk

low

Remediation Effort

low

Resource

Best Practice

Language

Java

Tags

best-practice, code-style, spring

Description

Reports classes annotated with both @Controller and @ResponseBody. The combination is equivalent to the single @RestController meta-annotation introduced in Spring 4.0.

Rationale

@RestController is a convenience annotation that combines @Controller and @ResponseBody. Using the two annotations separately is more verbose and may confuse readers about the class’s intent.

// Bad - redundant combination
@Controller
@ResponseBody
public class ApiController {
  @GetMapping("/data")
  public String getData() { return "data"; }
}

Remediation

Replace the two annotations with @RestController.

// Good - concise and idiomatic
@RestController
public class ApiController {
  @GetMapping("/data")
  public String getData() { return "data"; }
}

References