In this section, you will learn about configuring content negotiation in Spring MVC.

Content Negotiation Configuration

In this section, you will learn about configuring content negotiation in Spring MVC.

Content negotiation, introduced in Spring 3.2, resolves the requested media type of the request from the client. Afterward, the response is sent back to the client in the resolved media type.

The available options for determining the requested media type are :

• By checking file extension for each type of URI. For example: http://www,roseindia.net/java/tutorial_beginner.pdf requesting PDF representation and http://www,roseindia.net/java/tutorial_beginner.xml requesting XML representation.
  
  
• By checking Accept HTTP request header . For example, a request for http://www.roseindia.net/java/tutorial_beginner with an Accept header set to 'application/pdf' requests a PDF representation.
  
  

By default, extension of the file in the request URI is checked first and "Accept" header is checked next.

You can configure the content negotiation options by the MVC Java config as shown below :

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {
	@Override
	public void configureContentNegotiation(ContentNegotiationConfigurer configurer) {
		configurer.setFavorPathExtension(false).setFavorParameter(true);
	}
}

You can configure the content negotiation options by the MVC XML Namespace as shown below :

<mvc:annotation-driven content-negotiation-manager="contentNegotiationManager" />

<bean id="contentNegotiationManager" class="org.springframework.web.accept.ContentNegotiationManagerFactoryBean">
	<property name="favorPathExtension" value="false" />
	<property name="favorParameter" value="true" />
	<property name="mediaTypes" >
	<value>
		json=application/json
		xml=application/xml
	</value>
	</property>
</bean>

In the above configuration, the element <mvc:annotation-driven> has a attribute content-negotiation-manager that accepts a ContentNegotiationManager which can be created with a ContentNegotiationManagerFactoryBean.

Related Tags for Content Negotiation Configuration:

More Tutorials from this section

• Spring 3.2 Asynchronous Request Processing
• Autogenerated logical view name through RequestToViewNameTranslator
• Chaining of Multiple view resolvers
• ContentNegotiatingViewResolver
• Content Negotiation Configuration
• ControllerClassNameHandlerMapping class for handling convention mapping
• @Controller annotation for defining new controller
• Customizing the Default Error Page
• Customizing the MVC Java config or XML Namespace
• Support for ETag
• @ExceptionHandler & @ResponseStatus annotation
• Spring 3.2
• Interceptors Configuration using Java or XML
• Locales in Spring MVC
• Modification in conventional ModelAndView
• Multipart support for file upload in Spring MVC
• mvc:default-servlet-handler
• MVC Java Config or the MVC XML Namespace
• Processing Sequence of DispatcherServlet
• Redirecting and forwarding to views