Spring MVC - problems while returning an object as @ResponseBody (famous Error 406, unsolved)

Question

I've gone through absolutely every single post here related to the subject, trying all suggested here options... and after a couple of days, it still doesn't work for me.

In short, what I want to do is:

Send data from html form to the Spring MVC controller using jquery and $.post function with JSON type.
On the controller side I have a method which should return an object with one file of String type.

1st point works properly, I manage to send a POST request and receive it properly on the controller side. What doesn't work is the answer from controller back to jsp and the function defined for $.post(). I debugged it on web browser side and I can see that the Content-Type of response is not "application/json" (hence the Error 406, I believe).

Here's what I've got:

JSP:

<%@ taglib uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags/form"
    prefix="springForm"%>
<html>

<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>Insert title here</title>
<link rel="stylesheet"
    href="//code.jquery.com/ui/1.11.3/themes/smoothness/jquery-ui.css"/>
<script src="//code.jquery.com/jquery-1.10.2.js"></script>
<script src="//code.jquery.com/ui/1.11.3/jquery-ui.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
    <springForm:form method="POST" commandName="signInDto"
        action="/EquipmentManager/signIn.do" id="add-user-form">
        <p>
            Login:
            <springForm:input path="login" />
            <springForm:errors path="login" cssClass="error" />
        </p>
        <p>
            Password:
            <springForm:password path="password" />
            <springForm:errors path="password" cssClass="error" />
        </p>
        <p>${errorMessage}
        <p />
        <input type="submit" value="Sign In" />
    </springForm:form>

    <script type="text/javascript">
        function collectFormData(fields) {
            var data = {};
            for (var i = 0; i < fields.length; i++) {
                var $item = $(fields[i]);
                data[$item.attr('name')] = $item.val();
            }
            return data;
        }

        $(document).ready(
                function() {
                    var $form = $('#add-user-form');
                    $form.bind('submit', function(e) {
                        // Ajax validation
                        var $inputs = $form.find('input');
                        var data = collectFormData($inputs);

                        $.post('/EquipmentManager/signInValidate', data,
                                function(response) {
                                    $form.find('.control-group').removeClass(
                                            'error');
                                    $form.find('.help-inline').empty();
                                    $form.find('.alert').remove();

                                    if (response.value == 'FAIL') {
                                        alarm(response.value);
                                    } else {
                                        $form.unbind('submit');
                                        $form.submit();
                                    }
                                }, 'json');

                        e.preventDefault();
                        return false;
                    });
                });
    </script>
</body>
</html>

Controller:

@RequestMapping(value = "/signInValidate", method = RequestMethod.POST) public @ResponseBody TestObject signInValidate(@Valid SignInDto signInDto, BindingResult bindingResult) { TestObject testObject = new TestObject();

if (bindingResult.hasErrors()) {
    testObject.setValue("FAIL");
    logger.info("FAIL");
} else {
    testObject.setValue("SUCCESS");
    logger.info("SUCCESS");
}

return testObject;

}

Bean:

public class TestObject {

    private String value;

    public String getValue() {
        return value;
    }

    public void setValue(String value) {
        this.value = value;
    }
}

Dispatcher Servlet:

<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:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans     
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context 
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc.xsd">

    <context:component-scan base-package="com.equipment.controller" />
    <mvc:annotation-driven />

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

pom.xml:

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>com.esocphotoclub</groupId>
  <artifactId>EquipmentManager</artifactId>
  <packaging>war</packaging>
  <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <name>EquipmentManager Maven Webapp</name>
  <url>http://maven.apache.org</url>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>junit</groupId>
      <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
      <version>4.12</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>log4j</groupId>
        <artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
        <version>1.2.17</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
        <version>4.1.0.RELEASE</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
        <version>4.1.0.RELEASE</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
        <version>4.1.0.RELEASE</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
        <artifactId>hibernate-core</artifactId>
        <version>4.3.8.Final</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.hibernate</groupId>
        <artifactId>hibernate-validator</artifactId>
        <version>5.1.3.Final</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>commons-beanutils</groupId>
        <artifactId>commons-beanutils</artifactId>
        <version>1.9.2</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax.validation</groupId>
        <artifactId>validation-api</artifactId>
        <version>1.1.0.Final</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>joda-time</groupId>
        <artifactId>joda-time</artifactId>
        <version>2.7</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax.mail</groupId>
        <artifactId>mail</artifactId>
        <version>1.4.7</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-context-support</artifactId>
        <version>4.1.0.RELEASE</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>jstl</groupId>
        <artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
        <version>1.2</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>mysql</groupId>
        <artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>
        <version>5.1.34</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-context</artifactId>
        <version>4.1.0.RELEASE</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.codehaus.jackson</groupId>
        <artifactId>jackson-mapper-asl</artifactId>
        <version>1.9.11</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
        <artifactId>servlet-api</artifactId>
        <version>2.5</version>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
  <build>
    <finalName>EquipmentManager</finalName>
  </build>
</project>

I've already tried different versions of jackson-*, explicit defining of ContentNegotiatingViewResolver, explicit specification of produces="application/json" in @RequestMapping, TestObject serialisation, and few other things I've found here. None of them work for me.

To give you as much info as possible, all works fine if I don't request 'json' type in $.post and in the controller I return a simple string. That's not what I want to do though. What I want is to submit a request for validation purpose and receive an object, not a simple string.

Any hint I'll very much appreciate, perhaps there's something I still haven't try.

Many thanks in advance!

minion minion · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-24T21:47:47

I hope you have all jackson mapping and if that is the case you are missing jsonview. Can you try the below. All we are doing is setting multiple view resolvers.

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

<bean id="jsonViewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.XmlViewResolver">
  <property name="order" value="1"/>
  <property name="location" value="/WEB-INF/views.xml"/>
</bean>

Create a file called views.xml in you WEB-INF folder and add the below entry.

<bean name="jsonView" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.json.JsonView"/>

Spring MVC - problems while returning an object as @ResponseBody (famous Error 406, unsolved)

2 Answers