Spring MVC: Return a JSON object

In a Spring MVC project, we can directly return a JSON object. This feature is very useful when combined with ajax request from the client side. Here is few simple step to do this:

• Import JSON dependencies (jackson library) to your project
• Create Java objects, which will be converted to JSON object
• Create a simple Spring Controller to handle the request
• Test it using jetty server.

You can also download the source code here: https://github.com/nxhoaf/spring-mvc-json. Here, I assume that you are already familiar with Maven. If it’s not the case, you can certainly manually insert dependencies in your classpath.

1. JSON dependencies to your pom.xml

        <!-- Enable JSON via Jackson -->
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.jackson</groupId>
            <artifactId>jackson-core-asl</artifactId>
            <version>1.9.10</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.jackson</groupId>
            <artifactId>jackson-mapper-asl</artifactId>
            <version>1.9.10</version>
        </dependency>

2. Java Object, which will be converted to JSON

// --------------- Person.java ------------------
package com.gmail.nxhoaf;

public class Person {
    private String name;
    private int age;
    
    public Person() {}
    public Person(String name, int age) {
        this.name = name;
        this.age = age;
    }
    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }
    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
    public int getAge() {
        return age;
    }
    public void setAge(int age) {
        this.age = age;
    }
}

// --------------- Shop.java ------------------
package com.gmail.nxhoaf;
 
 
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;
 
public class Shop {
    private String name;
    private List<Person> staffs;
    
    public Shop() {
        staffs = new ArrayList<Person>();
    }
    
    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }
    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
    public List<Person> getStaffs() {
        return staffs;
    }
    public void setStaffs(List<Person> staffs) {
        this.staffs = staffs;
    }
    public void addStaff(Person staff) {
        staffs.add(staff);
    }
} 

3. Create simple Spring Controller

package com.gmail.nxhoaf;
 
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ResponseBody;
 
 
@Controller
@RequestMapping("/json")
public class JSonController {
    @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public @ResponseBody Shop getShopInJSON() {
        Shop shop = new Shop();
        shop.setName("myShop");
        
        Person p1 = new Person("Alice", 20);
        Person p2 = new Person("Bob", 30);
        shop.addStaff(p1);
        shop.addStaff(p2);
 
        return shop;
    }
} 

That is! Now, we test it with our jetty server. You might want to see here Spring MVC: Creating a Project from Scratch using Maven to see how to run a Spring MVC project with jetty

mvn clean install
mvn jetty:run

Then, open http://localhost:8080/spring-mvc-json/json, you should see the following result:

Advertisements