Spring MVC 4: “application/json” Content Type is not being set correctly

Question

I have a controller mapped with the following annotation:

@RequestMapping(value = "/json", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces = "application/json")
@ResponseBody
public String bar() {
    return "{\"test\": \"jsonResponseExample\"}";
}

I return a valid JSON string however, the content-type when I view the response on Chrome Dev Tools in browser is not application/json but just plain text/html . Why is the content type not being set?

My web.xml :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app metadata-complete="true" version="3.0"
    xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd">

    <display-name>Spring MVC Web Application</display-name>

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>

    <!-- static assets -->
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>default</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>*.js</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>default</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>*.css</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

    <context-param>
        <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
        <param-value>/WEB-INF/dispatcher-servlet.xml</param-value>
    </context-param>

    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
    </listener>
</web-app>

My dispatcher-servlet.xml :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans     
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-4.1.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/context 
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-4.1.xsd">


    <context:annotation-config />

    <context:component-scan base-package="com.mydomain.controllers" />

    <bean id="viewResolver"
        class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
        <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/" />
        <property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
    </bean>
</beans>

Using WildFly 8.1 as my app server.

Answer 1

First thing to understand is that the RequestMapping#produces() element in

@RequestMapping(value = "/json", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces = "application/json")

serves only to restrict the mapping for your request handlers. It does nothing else.

Then, given that your method has a return type of String and is annotated with @ResponseBody , the return value will be handled by StringHttpMessageConverter which sets the Content-type header to text/plain . If you want to return a JSON string yourself and set the header to application/json , use a return type of ResponseEntity (get rid of @ResponseBody ) and add appropriate headers to it.

@RequestMapping(value = "/json", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces = "application/json")
public ResponseEntity<String> bar() {
    final HttpHeaders httpHeaders= new HttpHeaders();
    httpHeaders.setContentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON);
    return new ResponseEntity<String>("{\"test\": \"jsonResponseExample\"}", httpHeaders, HttpStatus.OK);
}

---

Note that you should probably have

<mvc:annotation-driven /> 

in your servlet context configuration to set up your MVC configuration with the most suitable defaults.

Answer 2

Use jackson library and @ResponseBody annotation on return type for the Controller.

This works if you wish to return POJOs represented as JSon. If you woud like to return String and not POJOs as JSon please refer to Sotirious answer.

Answer 3

As other people have commented, because the return type of your method is String Spring won't feel need to do anything with the result.

If you change your signature so that the return type is something that needs marshalling, that should help:

@RequestMapping(value = "/json", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces = "application/json")
@ResponseBody
public Map<String, Object> bar() {
    HashMap<String, Object> map = new HashMap<String, Object>();
    map.put("test", "jsonRestExample");
    return map;
}

Answer 4

When I upgraded to Spring 4 I needed to update the jackson dependencies as follows:

    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
        <artifactId>jackson-core</artifactId>
        <version>2.5.1</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
        <artifactId>jackson-databind</artifactId>
        <version>2.5.1</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
        <artifactId>jackson-annotations</artifactId>
        <version>2.5.1</version>
    </dependency>        

Answer 5

I had the dependencies as specified @Greg post. I still faced the issue and could be able to resolve it by adding following additional jackson dependency:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackson-dataformat-xml</artifactId>
    <version>2.7.4</version>
</dependency>

Answer 6

Not exactly for this OP, but for those who encountered 404 and cannot set response content-type to "application/json" (any content-type ). One possibility is a server actually responds 406 but explorer (eg, chrome) prints it as 404.

If you do not customize message converter, spring would use AbstractMessageConverterMethodProcessor.java . It would run:

List<MediaType> requestedMediaTypes = getAcceptableMediaTypes(request);
List<MediaType> producibleMediaTypes = getProducibleMediaTypes(request, valueType, declaredType);

and if they do not have any overlapping (the same item), it would throw HttpMediaTypeNotAcceptableException and this finally causes 406. No matter if it is an ajax, or GET/POST, or form action, if the request uri ends with a .html or any suffix, the requestedMediaTypes would be "text/[that suffix]", and this conflicts with producibleMediaTypes , which is usually:

"application/json"  
"application/xml"   
"text/xml"          
"application/*+xml" 
"application/json"  
"application/*+json"
"application/json"  
"application/*+json"
"application/xml"   
"text/xml"          
"application/*+xml"
"application/xml"  
"text/xml"         
"application/*+xml"