This version is still in development and is not considered stable yet. For the latest stable version, please use Spring Framework 6.0.26!

Content Types

See equivalent in the Reactive stack

You can configure how Spring MVC determines the requested media types from the request (for example, Accept header, URL path extension, query parameter, and others).

By default, only the Accept header is checked.

If you must use URL-based content type resolution, consider using the query parameter strategy over path extensions. See Suffix Match and Suffix Match and RFD for more details.

In Java configuration, you can customize requested content type resolution, as the following example shows:

  • Java

  • Kotlin

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
public class WebConfig implements WebMvcConfigurer {

	@Override
	public void configureContentNegotiation(ContentNegotiationConfigurer configurer) {
		configurer.mediaType("json", MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON);
		configurer.mediaType("xml", MediaType.APPLICATION_XML);
	}
}
@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
class WebConfig : WebMvcConfigurer {

	override fun configureContentNegotiation(configurer: ContentNegotiationConfigurer) {
		configurer.mediaType("json", MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
		configurer.mediaType("xml", MediaType.APPLICATION_XML)
	}
}

The following example shows how to achieve the same configuration in XML:

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

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