Unable to return Freemarker view from a Spring Boot method

Question

Currently, I am doing a small project in which I need to use Spring Boot and FreeMarker template engine. I have tried different ways but I still cannot return a FreeMarker view from Spring Boot. My project uses Gradle as the build tool, here's what's inside:

build.gradle:

plugins {
    id 'org.springframework.boot' version '2.3.3.RELEASE'
    id 'java'
}

apply plugin: 'io.spring.dependency-management'

sourceCompatibility = 11

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

sourceSets.main.resources.srcDirs = ["src/resources"]

dependencies {
    implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter'
    implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-actuator'
    compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web")
    implementation 'com.google.code.gson:gson:2.8.5'
    implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-freemarker'

}

Here is my method which I expect to redirect to the FreeMarker view with a list, instead, when I send a GET request to this URL, I just get the " index " string displayed:

@GetMapping(path = "/code/latest")
public String getTop10LatestCode(@ModelAttribute("model") ModelMap model) {
    model.addAttribute("codes", codes.subList(Math.max(0, codes.size() - 10), Math.max(codes.size() - 1, 0)));
    return "index";
}

Here is my application.properties file:

server.port=8889
management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=*
management.endpoint.shutdown.enabled=true

spring.freemarker.template-loader-path=classpath:/templates/
spring.freemarker.suffix=.ftlh

My FreeMarker view is already under the templates folder inside the resources folder.

Here is my project structure:

Any help would be much appreciated, thanks.

Answer 1

I have figured it out, my class is annotated with the @RestController annotation, which itself is the combination of the @Controller and @ResponseBody annotations, because each method in my class will have a response body returned, even the one that I posted here, that's why it returns the body, hence returns index . I need to change my @RestController to @Controller and the problem solved.