Some clarification about how Spring MVC use the @RequestMapping annotation to implement RESTfull architecture

Question

I am studying for the Spring Core certification and I have some doubt about how Spring MVC handle REST web service.

Reading the documentation I found this example:

@RequestMapping(value="/orders", method=RequestMethod.GET)
    public void listOrders(Model model) {
    // find all Orders and add them to the model
}

@RequestMapping(value="/orders", method=RequestMethod.POST)
    public void createOrder(HttpServletRequest request, Model model) {
    // process the order data from the request
}

Ok, it show 2 Spring MVC method (that I think should be declared into a controller class, is it true).

These methods both handle HTTP request towards the /orders resource (according to the REST style in which a resource is seen as a programming element that manages a kind of data and a state and provide processing on this kind).

In this case if the HTTP request toward the /orders is a GET it will be executed the listOrders() method that return the list of all objects but if the request toward the /orders is a POST it will perform the createOrder() that create a new order

So what exactly means, that using the method paramether of the @RequestMapping annotation I can handle the HttpRequest according to the RESTful style?

Answer 1

REST is an architecture style that uses the various HTTP methods to model actions on resources.

Spring's @RequestMapping annotation is just a way to map a handler method to an HTTP request. The method attribute simply restricts which HTTP methods can be handled by the annotated method.