spring: return JSON from controller as ModelAndVIew

Question

How can I return JSON from spring controller as a view or ModelAndView? I am not interested in using @ResponseBody annotation. Is there any other w

Answer 1

Yes, you can return a MappingJacksonJsonView or assign it to a ModelAndView object using mav.setView(new MappingJacksonJsonView()).

Update: In Spring 4 MappingJacksonJsonView is deprecated. You might want to upgrade to MappingJackson2JsonView

Answer 2

You can use org.codehaus.jackson.map.ObjectMapper class for writing json strings to output stream. Use the following code snippet in method of your controller:

ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
mapper.writeValue(outputStream, model);
outputStream.flush();