Question

When using Spring, what is considered best practice when both JSON and XML is to be returned?

Say I have a method:

@RequestMapping(value="items/{id}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public Item getItem(@PathVariable, Long id) {
   // Find and return item.
}

How can I invoke this in a style like:
localhost:8080/app-name/items/1.xml and localhost:8080/app-name/items/1.json and get the data in their respective formats?

Answer 1

This is discussed in the Spring documentation here.

1. You can use two separate URLs to determine the type to return

2. You can use accept headers. However from a browser you are unable to set the accept headers. Therefore using separate URL’s gives more control.