Spring MVC: @ResponseBody Get method return void

Question

I have a controller method which should return some data. I'm wondering why despite it's GET and marked with @ResponseBody it's void .

@ResponseBody    
@RequestMapping(value = "/{id}/data", method = GET)
public void getData(....) { // < Question: how it can be void?
  ....
  dataService.streamData(query); // < this method is also void
}

Question: What spring returns in this case? Is this method useless?

Answer 1

If a controller returns a null view name , or declares a void return type , Spring will attempt to infer the view name from the request URL.

It does this using an implementation of RequestToViewNameTranslator , the default implementation of which is DefaultRequestToViewNameTranslator

complete info here