What is the difference b/w @RequestParam and @QueryParam Anotation

Question

What is main difference between @RequestParam and @QueryParam in Spring MVC controller?

Answer 1

In addition to above another difference I observed is QueryParam do not translate parameters values to List type however RequestParam does.

What I mean is "@RequestParam("para") List param" is able to convert comma separated param values to List, @QueryParam fails to translate this.

Answer 2

@QueryParam is a JAX-RS framework annotation and @RequestParam is from Spring.

Answer 3

Apart from these mentioned differences in framework, one major difference is @RequestParam will always expect a value to bind. Hence, if value is not passed, it will give error. This is not the case in @QueryParam

To explicitly give the option, use required = false while using @RequestParam

Answer 4

I'll try to shed some more detailed light on this question.

Let's start with semantics of Query Parameter vs. Request Parameter, respectively @QueryParam vs. @RequestParam

Query Parameter, according to the HTTP Specification and also according to this annotation's (@QueryParam) implementation JAX-RS, represents the parameter found in query string. i.e. the string which follows the question-mark in the full request URL.

Request Parameter, according to the HTTP Specification and also according to this annotation's (@RequestParam) implementation Spring MVC (org.springframework.web.bind.annotation), represents the parameter of HTTP request, and to be clear here, it doesn't specify which type of parameter it is - query, header, body or etc.

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Now let's talk about implementations per se.

@QueryParam

@QueryParam annotation belongs to JAX-RS specification, which states, that:

@QueryParam Binds the value(s) of a HTTP query parameter to a resource method parameter, resource class field, or resource class bean property

Pay attention here, it's query parameter which is bound to resource method's parameter (i.e. parameter in query string)

@RequestParam

@RequestParam on the other hand, belongs to Spring Framework, which states, that:

@RequestParam annotation indicates that a method parameter should be bound to a web request parameter.
• In Spring MVC, "request parameters" map to query parameters, form data, and parts in multipart requests. This is because the Servlet API combines query parameters and form data into a single map called "parameters", and that includes automatic parsing of the request body.

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Therefore, I think the names may be indeed a little bit misleading, but after digging in a little bit more, they are quite self-explanatory. Just try to stick with one when you want only query parameter and with another when you want any request parameter.