[java] In Spring MVC, how can I set the mime type header when using @ResponseBody

I have a Spring MVC Controller that returns a JSON String and I would like to set the mimetype to application/json. How can I do that?

@RequestMapping(method=RequestMethod.GET, value="foo/bar")
@ResponseBody
public String fooBar(){
    return myService.getJson();
}

The business objects are already available as JSON strings, so using MappingJacksonJsonView is not the solution for me. @ResponseBody is perfect, but how can I set the mimetype?

I don't think this is possible. There appears to be an open Jira for it:

SPR-6702: Explicitly set response Content-Type in @ResponseBody

Use ResponseEntity instead of ResponseBody. This way you have access to the response headers and you can set the appropiate content type. According to the Spring docs:

The HttpEntity is similar to @RequestBody and @ResponseBody. Besides getting access to the request and response body, HttpEntity (and the response-specific subclass ResponseEntity) also allows access to the request and response headers

The code will look like:

@RequestMapping(method=RequestMethod.GET, value="/fooBar")
public ResponseEntity<String> fooBar2() {
    String json = "jsonResponse";
    HttpHeaders responseHeaders = new HttpHeaders();
    responseHeaders.setContentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON);
    return new ResponseEntity<String>(json, responseHeaders, HttpStatus.CREATED);
}

Register org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter as the message converter and return the object directly from the method.

<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter">
  <property name="webBindingInitializer">
    <bean class="org.springframework.web.bind.support.ConfigurableWebBindingInitializer"/>
  </property>
  <property name="messageConverters">
    <list>
      <bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter"/>
    </list>
  </property>
</bean>

and the controller:

@RequestMapping(method=RequestMethod.GET, value="foo/bar")
public @ResponseBody Object fooBar(){
    return myService.getActualObject();
}

This requires the dependency org.springframework:spring-webmvc.

I don't think you can, apart from response.setContentType(..)

You may not be able to do it with @ResponseBody, but something like this should work:

package xxx;

import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;

@Controller
public class FooBar {
  @RequestMapping(value="foo/bar", method = RequestMethod.GET)
  public void fooBar(HttpServletResponse response) throws IOException {
    ByteArrayOutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    out.write(myService.getJson().getBytes());
    response.setContentType("application/json");
    response.setContentLength(out.size());
    response.getOutputStream().write(out.toByteArray());
    response.getOutputStream().flush();
  }
}

My version of reality. Loading a HTML file and streaming to the browser.

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/")
public class UIController {

    @RequestMapping(value="index", method=RequestMethod.GET, produces = "text/html")
    public @ResponseBody String GetBootupFile() throws IOException  {
        Resource resource = new ClassPathResource("MainPage.html");
        String fileContents = FileUtils.readFileToString(resource.getFile());
        return fileContents;
    }
}