spring boot return string instead of .html file

Question

I tried to run spring boot application, that will return me the HTML static file on the static folder, the problem was: every time I load the page: 127.0.0.1 I get the String "bakara" and not the HTML file bakara.html. and when I load 127.0.0.1/bakara.html I get the bakara.html file

pom.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<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/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>il.mda.ks</groupId>
<artifactId>mdaForm</artifactId>
<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
<packaging>war</packaging>
<name>mdaForm</name>
<description>Demo project for Spring Boot</description>


<parent>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
    <version>2.1.1.RELEASE</version>
    <relativePath /> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
</parent>

<properties>
    <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
    <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
    <java.version>1.8</java.version>
</properties>


<dependencies>
    <!-- This is a web application -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
    </dependency>

    <!-- Tomcat embedded container -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
        <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>

    <!-- JSTL for JSP -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
        <artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
    </dependency>

    <!-- Need this to compile JSP -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
        <artifactId>tomcat-embed-jasper</artifactId>
        <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>

    <!-- Need this to compile JSP, tomcat-embed-jasper version is not working, 
        no idea why -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.eclipse.jdt.core.compiler</groupId>
        <artifactId>ecj</artifactId>
        <version>4.6.1</version>
        <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>

    <!-- Optional, test for static content, bootstrap CSS -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.webjars</groupId>
        <artifactId>bootstrap</artifactId>
        <version>3.3.7</version>
    </dependency>

</dependencies>

application.properties:

#spring.mvc.view.prefix=/static/
#spring.mvc.view.suffix=.html

spring.mvc.view.prefix=/static
spring.mvc.view.suffix=.html

HomeController.java:

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.*;

@Controller
public class HomeController {

    @RequestMapping("/")
    @ResponseBody
    public String welcome() {
        return "bakara";
    }
}

project structure:

|── src
│   ├── main
│   │   ├── java
│   │   │   └── il
│   │   │       └── mda
│   │   │           └── ks
│   │   │               └── mdaForm
│   │   │                   ├── BakaraController.java
│   │   │                   ├── HomeController.java
│   │   │                   └── MdaFormApplication.java
│   │   └── resources
│   │       ├── application.properties
│   │       ├── static
│   │       │   ├── assets
│   │       │   ├── bakara.html
│   │       │   ├── succeed.html
│   │       │   └── TokenDenied.html
│   │       └── templates

score 34 · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-09 20:46:05Z

34

@Controller VS @RestController

@Controller is used to mark classes as Spring MVC Controller.
@RestController is a convenience annotation that does nothing more than adding the @Controller and @ResponseBody annotations.

So in your case just removing the @ResponseBody annotation from the welcome() method in HomeController.java, should be enough to get the desired output.

Also have a look at this Spring Guide displaying how to Serve Web Content with Spring MVC

edited Dec 9, 2018 at 20:46

answered Dec 9, 2018 at 19:40

anon

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Comments

Shubham Dixit · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-10 01:21:19Z

5

By Default Spring Boot Looks For your html templates in templates folder static folder is for your other files like css and js .Try moving your html files in src/main/resources/templates folder and remove @ResponseBody from your controller method and remove this from your application properties spring.mvc.view.prefix=/static. I hope it will work.

answered Dec 10, 2018 at 1:21

Shubham Dixit

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Comments

Adina Rolea · Accepted Answer · 2018-12-09 17:40:26Z

5

When you use annotation @ResponseBody, you actually tell spring to not try to find a view with the returned name. If you want the html, just remove the annotation from the controller method.

answered Dec 9, 2018 at 17:40

Adina Rolea

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1 Comment

Jonas Over a year ago

I think you configured your application.properties with the spring.mvc.view.prefix=/static. Have you tried to access the page via 127.0.0.1/static/bakara.html?

Grégori Fernandes de Lima · Accepted Answer · 2020-06-23 13:22:22Z

2

I had this same problem. There was no way to return an html just by returning a String with the name of the html file. For me, it only worked using ModelAndView, in your case it would look like this:

@RequestMapping("/")
public ModelAndView welcome() {
    ModelAndView modelAndView = new ModelAndView();
    modelAndView.setViewName("bakara");
    return modelAndView;
}

Some people say that problems like this occurs because the jdk version. I use jdk14.

answered Jun 23, 2020 at 13:22

Grégori Fernandes de Lima

1,49415 silver badges13 bronze badges

1 Comment

roamer Over a year ago

use @Controller but not @RestController

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