How can I serve static html from spring boot?

As it is written before, some folders (/META-INF/resources/, /resources/, /static/, /public/) serve static content by default, conroller misconfiguration can break this behaviour.

It is a common pitfall that people define the base url of a controller in the @RestController annotation, instead of the @RequestMapping annotation on the top of the controllers.

This is wrong:

@RestController("/api/base")
public class MyController {

    @PostMapping
    public String myPostMethod( ...) {

The above example will prevent you from opening the index.html. The Spring expects a POST method at the root, because the myPostMethod is mapped to the "/" path.

You have to use this instead:

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/api/base")
public class MyController {

    @PostMapping
    public String myPostMethod( ...) {

I am using :: Spring Boot :: (v2.0.4.RELEASE) with Spring Framework 5

Spring Boot 2.0 requires Java 8 as a minimum version. Many existing APIs have been updated to take advantage of Java 8 features such as: default methods on interfaces, functional callbacks, and new APIs such as javax.time.

Static Content

By default, Spring Boot serves static content from a directory called /static (or /public or /resources or /META-INF/resources) in the classpath or from the root of the ServletContext. It uses the ResourceHttpRequestHandler from Spring MVC so that you can modify that behavior by adding your own WebMvcConfigurer and overriding the addResourceHandlers method.

By default, resources are mapped on /** and located on /static directory. But you can customize the static loactions programmatically inside our web context configuration class.

@Configuration @EnableWebMvc
public class Static_ResourceHandler implements WebMvcConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void addResourceHandlers(ResourceHandlerRegistry registry) {
        // When overriding default behavior, you need to add default(/) as well as added static paths(/webapp).

        // src/main/resources/static/...
        registry
            //.addResourceHandler("/**") // « /css/myStatic.css
            .addResourceHandler("/static/**") // « /static/css/myStatic.css
            .addResourceLocations("classpath:/static/") // Default Static Loaction
            .setCachePeriod( 3600 )
            .resourceChain(true) // 4.1
            .addResolver(new GzipResourceResolver()) // 4.1
            .addResolver(new PathResourceResolver()); //4.1

        // src/main/resources/templates/static/...
        registry
            .addResourceHandler("/templates/**") // « /templates/style.css
            .addResourceLocations("classpath:/templates/static/");

        // Do not use the src/main/webapp/... directory if your application is packaged as a jar.
        registry
            .addResourceHandler("/webapp/**") // « /webapp/css/style.css
            .addResourceLocations("/");

        // File located on disk
        registry
            .addResourceHandler("/system/files/**")
            .addResourceLocations("file:///D:/");
    }
}

http://localhost:8080/handlerPath/resource-path+name
                    /static         /css/myStatic.css
                    /webapp         /css/style.css
                    /templates      /style.css

In Spring every request will go through the DispatcherServlet. To avoid Static file request through DispatcherServlet(Front contoller) we configure MVC Static content.

As @STEEL said static resources should not go through Controller. Thymleaf is a ViewResolver which takes the view name form controller and adds prefix and suffix to View Layer.

In Spring boot, /META-INF/resources/, /resources/, static/ and public/ directories are available to serve static contents.

So you can create a static/ or public/ directory under resources/ directory and put your static contents there. And they will be accessible by: http://localhost:8080/your-file.ext. (assuming the server.port is 8080)

You can customize these directories using spring.resources.static-locations in the application.properties.

For example:

spring.resources.static-locations=classpath:/custom/

Now you can use custom/ folder under resources/ to serve static files.

This is also possible using Java config in Spring Boot 2:

@Configuration
public class StaticConfig implements WebMvcConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void addResourceHandlers(ResourceHandlerRegistry registry) {
        registry.addResourceHandler("/static/**").addResourceLocations("classpath:/custom/");
    }
}

This confugration maps contents of custom directory to the http://localhost:8080/static/** url.

Static files should be served from resources, not from a controller.

Spring Boot will automatically add static web resources located within any of the following directories:

/META-INF/resources/  
/resources/  
/static/  
/public/

refs:
https://spring.io/blog/2013/12/19/serving-static-web-content-with-spring-boot
https://spring.io/guides/gs/serving-web-content/