Question

Follwing the examples from Krams. What does the below return, will the Person object be converted to JSON or XML based on the header of submitted request ?

 @RequestMapping(value = "/person", 
           method = RequestMethod.POST, 
           headers="Accept=application/xml, application/json")
 public @ResponseBody Person addPerson(@RequestBody Person person) {
     logger.debug("Provider has received request to add new person");

     // Call service to here
     return personService.add(person);
    }

So when I submit data as json I get json back, and the same for xml. Or is something else going on ?

Answer 1

It depends on Accept http request header. If it’s json, you get json, if it’s xml you get xml.

That’s exactly what this part of your code says.:

....
headers="Accept=application/xml, application/json")
...

You can send one mime type and receive another without problems.

edit

Both headers and produces/consumes parameters only say what can be produced/consumed by the requestmapping. They don’t force any particular serialization. The type of request/response is decided entirely in request headers. If the dispatcher doesn’t find mapping with produces and consumes (or headers) matching the request headers you’ll get an error.