Returning String or HTML to ajax request with spring 2.5

Question

I am using Spring 2.5 (XML based configuration) .In my Spring controller how can i return a string back to my AJAX request? My ajax code is as follows:

 jq("#editAdTextSave").click(function() {
        alert( "Handler for .click() called." );
        jq.ajax({
              url: 'bookingDetail.html',
              type: 'POST',
              data: 'action=updateAdText',
              success: function(data) {
                //called when successful
                alert(model);
                //$('#ajaxphp-results').html(data);
              },
              error: function(e) {
                //called when there is an error
                //console.log(e.message);
  }
});
    });

COntroller onSubmit requires a ModelAndView object return value.However I only require to return a string.How could I do that.Please suggest.

Answer 1

You need to use @ResponseBody in your mapping method. Using @ResponseBody would write the value you return to HttpResponseBody and will not be evaluated as view. Here's quick demo:

@Controller
public class DemoController {

    @RequestMapping(value="/getString",method = RequestMethod.POST)
    @ResponseBody
    public String getStringData() {
        return "data";
    }    
}

Answer 2

As in the question, Spring 2.5 is used; @ResponseBody was introduced in Spring 3.0

@see ResponseBody JavaDocs in Latest Spring

---

Back to the question.

In my Spring controller how can i return a string ...

The simple answer as per Spring Blog Post you need to add OutputStream as a parameter to your controller method.

You XML based configuration should look like this

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
   xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

    <context:component-scan base-package="your.controllers"/>

</beans>

And your controller should look like this

package your.controllers;

@Controller
public class YourController {

    @RequestMapping(value = "/yourController")
    protected void handleRequest(OutputStream outputStream) throws IOException {
        outputStream.write(
            "YOUR DESIRED STRING VALUE".getBytes()
        );
    }
}

---

Finally if you want to do it without any kind of annotations at all, then;

Your XML based configuration should look like this

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
       xsi:schemaLocation="
            http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
            http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd">

    <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.handler.BeanNameUrlHandlerMapping"/>

    <bean name="/yourController" class="your.controllers.YourController"/>

</beans>

And your controller should look like this

package your.controllers;

public class YourController extends AbstractController {

    @Override
    protected ModelAndView handleRequestInternal(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) throws Exception {
        response.getOutputStream().write(("YOUR DESIRED STRING VALUE").getBytes());
        return null;
    }
}