Spring 3 and REST

[Rendi Artha]

Is there any new configuration for using REST for simplicity like annotation or spring expression language?

Rgds,
Rendi ArtaWijaya

[Arnaud Cogoluegnes]

In Spring 3.0, server-side REST features are provided by a set of annotations for your Web controllers as well as by some support for views (e.g. XML marshalling, content negociation). This is one of the most appealing feature of the REST support in Spring: it's the same programming model as Spring MVC.

[Mark Spritzler]

Arnaud Cogoluegnes wrote:In Spring 3.0, server-side REST features are provided by a set of annotations for your Web controllers as well as by some support for views (e.g. XML marshalling, content negociation). This is one of the most appealing feature of the REST support in Spring: it's the same programming model as Spring MVC.

And in most cases, you don't have to change your Controller class/code that you are using in a web site.

Mark

[Craig Walls]

The Spring 3 REST model is pretty much the same as the Spring 2.5 non-REST MVC. The key new things in Spring 3 to support REST in Spring MVC are:

- A new @PathVariable annotation for handling requests with URLs that have parameters embedded in the path (e.g., "/customer/23112/history", where 23112 is the customer's ID).
- A new ContentNegotiatingViewResolver that resolves views based on the request's file extension, HTTP Accepts header, or a parameter. For example if the request is for "/customer/23112/history", perhaps it would produce HTML output by default. But if the Accepts header says "text/xml", then maybe it would produce XML output...or if the URL were "/customer/23112/history.json", maybe it would produce JSON output.

That said, I've found that I write my controllers differently now than I did before. Previously, I wrote use-case-oriented controllers...one controller per use case...AddProductController for example. Now I find myself writing resource-oriented controllers...one controller per resource type and many handler methods...ProductController, for example. You don't have to do that, but I find it to be a much better approach.

[Rendi Artha]

Hi Craig,
Thanks for valuable info about Spring 3 REST ...
Its good to know there are several new features, one of them are a new view resolver "ContentNegotiatingViewResolver" ... cant wait to try it.
In my thinking i could use ajax support for REST by using these new viewresolver and produce JSON to supplied by client side and hoopla..... i have ajax enable REST
Hope it works

Rgds,
Rendi