What is the best way to return different types of ResponseEntity in Spring MVC or Spring-Boot

Question

I have written simple rest application using Spring MVC 4 (or Spring-Boot). Within the controller I have return ResponseEntity. But in some cases I want to give

Answer 1

You can use a map with your object or string like bellow :

@RequestMapping(value = "/path", 
        method = RequestMethod.GET, 
        produces = MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE)
    @ResponseBody
    public ResponseEntity> getData(){

    Map response = new HashMap();

    boolean isValid = // some logic
    if (isValid){
        response.put("ok", "success saving data");
        return ResponseEntity.accepted().body(response);
    }
    else{
        response.put("error", "an error expected on processing file");
        return ResponseEntity.badRequest().body(response);
    }

}