Annotated Controllers

See equivalent in the Reactive stack

Spring MVC provides an annotation-based programming model where @Controller and @RestController components use annotations to express request mappings, request input, exception handling, and more. Annotated controllers have flexible method signatures and do not have to extend base classes nor implement specific interfaces. The following example shows a controller defined by annotations:

Java
Kotlin

@Controller
public class HelloController {

	@GetMapping("/hello")
	public String handle(Model model) {
		model.addAttribute("message", "Hello World!");
		return "index";
	}
}

import org.springframework.ui.set

@Controller
class HelloController {

	@GetMapping("/hello")
	fun handle(model: Model): String {
		model["message"] = "Hello World!"
		return "index"
	}
}

In the preceding example, the method accepts a Model and returns a view name as a String, but many other options exist and are explained later in this chapter.

Guides and tutorials on spring.io use the annotation-based programming model described in this section.