@RestController in existing spring-mvc servlet in Spring Framework 4.3 [closed]

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I am maintaining a Spring 4.3 MVC app, upgrading it is a complicated and long term task. For my setup, XML-based, I did not find much on the internet, mostly Spring Boot stuff. I tried adding a @RestController in the current MVC app, but it did not work.

With @RestController in Spring 4.3, can it be used simultaneously with a Spring web-mvc controller in the same servlet (i.e. web.xml and business-servlet.xml), or must it be defined in a separate servlet which contains @RestControllers only?

Yes there is nothing preventing you from "mixing" those. However the annotation processing, on older versions of Spring, is opt-in. So for the annotation style to work you will need to enable it, adding an <mvc:annotation-driven /> to the business-servlet.xml (and ofcourse adding the namespace to the XML file). — M. Deinum
– M. Deinum, Commented Nov 24 at 9:45
Thanks for your help @M.Deinum, it helped me not give up on the idea. I was apparently confusing several apps a bit, so the app in question was missing a DispatcherServlet, but once that was in place. It worked like a charm. — Thomas
– Thomas, Commented Nov 26 at 7:46
A big thanks to @MarcoBehler article link it helped me remember about the DispatcherServlet and how spring works under the hood. — Thomas
– Thomas, Commented Nov 26 at 7:58
If there was no DispatcherServlet to start with how was this a Spring MVC application to start with?! — M. Deinum
– M. Deinum, Commented Nov 26 at 7:59
@M.Deinum, long answer short I mixed things up, sorry. The actual question was still valid and real, "is it possible...", cause I didnt really know if or how to do it in Spring prior to Spring Boot. In the actual stack, I mixed things: 5 apps are Spring MVC, but v3.0.2. The last is Spring 4.3, but Spring with Apache CXF. Since I now know how it works, I can create the REST API I need and upgrade the MVC apps from Spring 3.x to 4.3 and I port an Ajax API to the RestController annotation type as well. — Thomas
– Thomas, Commented Nov 26 at 8:47

Yassine Hamdouni · Accepted Answer · 2025-11-24 10:45:46Z

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Yes, in Spring Framework 4.3 with XML config, you can use @RestController and traditional @Controller together in the same servlet. Just make sure <mvc:annotation-driven /> and component scanning are enabled. No need for a separate servlet.

answered Nov 24 at 10:45

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