Spring MVC 4: "application/json" Content Type is not being set correctly

Question

I have a controller mapped with the following annotation:

@RequestMapping(value = "/json", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces = "application/json")
@ResponseBody
public String bar() {
    return "{\"test\": \"jsonResponseExample\"}";
}

I return a valid JSON string however, the content-type when I view the response on Chrome Dev Tools in browser is not application/json but just plain text/html. Why is the content type not being set?

My web.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app metadata-complete="true" version="3.0"
    xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd">

    <display-name>Spring MVC Web Application</display-name>

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
        <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
    </servlet>

    <!-- static assets -->
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>default</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>*.js</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>default</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>*.css</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>dispatcher</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

    <context-param>
        <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
        <param-value>/WEB-INF/dispatcher-servlet.xml</param-value>
    </context-param>

    <listener>
        <listener-class>org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
    </listener>
</web-app>

My dispatcher-servlet.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans     
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-4.1.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/context 
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-4.1.xsd">


    <context:annotation-config />

    <context:component-scan base-package="com.mydomain.controllers" />

    <bean id="viewResolver"
        class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
        <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/" />
        <property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
    </bean>
</beans>

Using WildFly 8.1 as my app server.

Answer 1

First thing to understand is that the RequestMapping#produces() element in

@RequestMapping(value = "/json", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces = "application/json")

serves only to restrict the mapping for your request handlers. It does nothing else.

Then, given that your method has a return type of String and is annotated with @ResponseBody, the return value will be handled by StringHttpMessageConverter which sets the Content-type header to text/plain. If you want to return a JSON string yourself and set the header to application/json, use a return type of ResponseEntity (get rid of @ResponseBody) and add appropriate headers to it.

@RequestMapping(value = "/json", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces = "application/json")
public ResponseEntity<String> bar() {
    final HttpHeaders httpHeaders= new HttpHeaders();
    httpHeaders.setContentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON);
    return new ResponseEntity<String>("{\"test\": \"jsonResponseExample\"}", httpHeaders, HttpStatus.OK);
}

---

Note that you should probably have

<mvc:annotation-driven /> 

in your servlet context configuration to set up your MVC configuration with the most suitable defaults.