RESTful API implementation in Spring MVC

In Chapter 3, Spring 5 - The Right Stack for the Job at Hand, we mentioned using the @RestController annotation to create RESTful APIs in Spring MVC. In this section, we will go through the support that Spring MVC provides for RESTful API implementation.

MVC annotations

Let's have a look in detail about various MVC annotations:

• The @RestController annotation is a combination of the @Controller annotation and the @ResponseBody annotation. As mentioned previously, with the @ResponseBody annotation, the return value of the API handlers in controllers will be mapped to the required representation based on the Content-Type header in the request.
• The @RequestMapping annotation and its convenient aliases, including @GetMapping, @PostMapping, @PatchMapping, @PutMapping, and @DeleteMapping, can be used to create URIs of resources.
• The @ResponseEntity annotation provides the ability to control the HTTP headers and status codes, besides returning the response body...