What is a good strategy for converting jpa entities into restful resources

Question

Restful resources do not always have a one-to-one mapping with your jpa entities. As I see it there are a few problems that I am trying to figure out how to handle:

Answer 1

If you application is completely CRUDish then the way to go is definitely Spring Data REST in which you absolutely do not need DTOs. If it's more complicated than that you will be safer with DTOs securing the application layer. But do not attempt to encapsulate DTOs inside the controller layer. They belong to a service layer cause the mapping is also the part of logic (what you let in the application and what you let out of it). This way the application layer stays hermetic. Of course in most cases it can be the mix of those two.