Generic Spring MVC Controller with Inheritance

Question

Can I do the following in Spring MVC

Suppose I have the Base GenericController as follows with one request mapping "/list"

@Controller
public class GenericController<T>{

    @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET, value = "/list")
    public @ResponseBody List<T> getMyPage(){
        // returns list of T
    }

}

Below are my two controllers

@Controller(value = "/page1")
public class Page1Controller extends GenericController<Page1>{

}

@Controller(value = "/page2")
public class Page2Controller extends GenericController<Page2>{

}

Now will i be able to access the url "/page1/list" and "/page2/list" where first goes to Page1Controller and second goes to Page2Controller.

AFAIK, annotations are not inherited, so this may not work as expected — Arun P Johny
– Arun P Johny, Commented Mar 13, 2013 at 10:41

Robin · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-02 09:03:21Z

15

That's not possible and was already rejected, see SPR-10089. I think this would be somewhat confusing and in addition, it is very unlikely that those method behave exactly the same besides the different mapping. But you can use delegation instead:

public class BaseController<T> {
    public List<T> getPageList(){
        // returns list of T
    }
}

@Controller(value = "/page1")
public class Page1Controller extends BaseController<Page1>{
    @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET, value = "/list")
    public @ResponseBody List<Page1> getMyPage() {
      return super.getPageList();
    }    
}

@Controller(value = "/page2")
public class Page2Controller extends BaseController<Page2>{
    @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET, value = "/list")
    public @ResponseBody List<Page2> getMyPage() {
      return super.getPageList();
    }
}

edited Jun 2, 2014 at 9:03

answered Apr 17, 2013 at 15:44

Robin

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4 Comments

Nitzan Volman Over a year ago

I think SPR-10089 does not fit this example, which should conceptually work. SPR-10089 will not "stack" url mappings on @RequestMapping on the class level. see this stackoverflow.com/questions/5268643/… for a complete explanation.

Nitzan Volman Over a year ago

In this example, should be ok to have a class level annotation, and method level annotations in the base class.

Michail Michailidis Over a year ago

how would that work? for each of the resources you usually have a CrudRepository or a similar Service.. by delegating to the parent how would you get the correct repository? You will need to pass that as an argument somehow, which would be ugly

Dariusz Over a year ago

@robin It seems that this answer is out of date. Take a look at manish's answer.

manish · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-24 03:18:46Z

8

For those looking for something similar with Spring Framework 4.x, the class hierarchy provided by the OP is possible. A sample application is available on Github. It allows users to view a list of books or a list of magazines as JSON.

edited Feb 24, 2016 at 3:18

answered Nov 16, 2015 at 5:20

manish

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2 Comments

manish Over a year ago

Why do you say that the super type does not have the @RequestMapping annotation? The super type BaseController does have the annotation on the list method which is what the first code snippet in the question shows. May be you have a different requirement and got confused?

Michael Wyraz Over a year ago

manish, you're right, sorry for wrong comment - I'll delete it and upvote ;-) Edit: The solution works fine for me, so IMO this is the correct answer.

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