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

Here is a way that I would do it:

public ResponseEntity < ? extends BaseResponse > message(@PathVariable String player) { //REST Endpoint.

 try {
  Integer.parseInt(player);
  return new ResponseEntity < ErrorResponse > (new ErrorResponse("111", "player is not found"), HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST);
 } catch (Exception e) {


 }
 Message msg = new Message(player, "Hello " + player);
 return new ResponseEntity < Message > (msg, HttpStatus.OK);

}

@RequestMapping(value = "/getAll/{player}", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces = MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE)
public ResponseEntity < List < ? extends BaseResponse >> messageAll(@PathVariable String player) { //REST Endpoint.

 try {
  Integer.parseInt(player);
  List < ErrorResponse > errs = new ArrayList < ErrorResponse > ();
  errs.add(new ErrorResponse("111", "player is not found"));
  return new ResponseEntity < List < ? extends BaseResponse >> (errs, HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST);
 } catch (Exception e) {


 }
 Message msg = new Message(player, "Hello " + player);
 List < Message > msgList = new ArrayList < Message > ();
 msgList.add(msg);
 return new ResponseEntity < List < ? extends BaseResponse >> (msgList, HttpStatus.OK);

}