Difference Between @RestController and @Controller in Spring

Difference Between @RestController and @Controller in Spring

Spring Framework provides two important annotations for defining controllers: @Controller and @RestController. Although they may seem similar, they serve different purposes in web application development.

🔍 Key Differences

Feature	@Controller	@RestController
Purpose	Used in traditional MVC applications to return views (HTML/JSP).	Used in REST APIs to return JSON/XML responses directly.
Return Type	Returns logical view names, resolved by ViewResolver.	Returns response body directly (usually JSON).
Annotation Behavior	Requires @ResponseBody on each method to return JSON/XML.	Automatically adds @ResponseBody to all methods.
Common Usage	Web UI / JSP / Thymeleaf-based applications.	RESTful web services.

📘 Example Using @Controller

@Controller
public class WebController {

    @GetMapping("/home")
    public String homePage(Model model) {
        model.addAttribute("title", "Welcome Page");
        return "home"; // resolves to home.html or home.jsp
    }

    @GetMapping("/api/message")
    @ResponseBody
    public String message() {
        return "Hello from @Controller with @ResponseBody";
    }
}

📘 Example Using @RestController

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/api")
public class ApiController {

    @GetMapping("/hello")
    public String hello() {
        return "Hello from @RestController";
    }

    @GetMapping("/user")
    public User getUser() {
        return new User(1L, "John", "john@example.com");
    }
}

🧠 When to Use What?

• Use @Controller when building web applications with HTML views.
• Use @RestController when developing APIs that return data as JSON/XML.

🎯 Tip

@RestController is simply a shorthand for @Controller + @ResponseBody.

@Target({ElementType.TYPE})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Controller
@ResponseBody
public @interface RestController {
}

✅ Conclusion

Understanding the distinction between @Controller and @RestController is crucial for developing scalable Spring applications. Choose wisely based on your project needs — view-based or data-based.

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