@RequestBody and @ResponseBody annotations in Spring

@RequestBody : Annotation indicating a method parameter should be bound to the body of the HTTP request.

For example:

@RequestMapping(path = "/something", method = RequestMethod.PUT)
public void handle(@RequestBody String body, Writer writer) throws IOException {
    writer.write(body);
}

@ResponseBody annotation can be put on a method and indicates that the return type should be written straight to the HTTP response body (and not placed in a Model, or interpreted as a view name).

For example:

@RequestMapping(path = "/something", method = RequestMethod.PUT)
public  @ResponseBody String helloWorld() {
    return "Hello World";
}  

Alternatively, we can use @RestController annotation in place of @Controller annotation. This will remove the need to using @ResponseBody.

for more details

There is a whole Section in the docs called 16.3.3.4 Mapping the request body with the @RequestBody annotation. And one called 16.3.3.5 Mapping the response body with the @ResponseBody annotation. I suggest you consult those sections. Also relevant: @RequestBody javadocs, @ResponseBody javadocs

Usage examples would be something like this:

Using a JavaScript-library like JQuery, you would post a JSON-Object like this:

{ "firstName" : "Elmer", "lastName" : "Fudd" }

Your controller method would look like this:

// controller
@ResponseBody @RequestMapping("/description")
public Description getDescription(@RequestBody UserStats stats){
    return new Description(stats.getFirstName() + " " + stats.getLastname() + " hates wacky wabbits");
}

// domain / value objects
public class UserStats{
    private String firstName;
    private String lastName;
    // + getters, setters
}
public class Description{
    private String description;
    // + getters, setters, constructor
}

Now if you have Jackson on your classpath (and have an <mvc:annotation-driven> setup), Spring would convert the incoming JSON to a UserStats object from the post body (because you added the @RequestBody annotation) and it would serialize the returned object to JSON (because you added the @ResponseBody annotation). So the Browser / Client would see this JSON result:

{ "description" : "Elmer Fudd hates wacky wabbits" }

See this previous answer of mine for a complete working example: https://stackoverflow.com/a/5908632/342852

Note: RequestBody / ResponseBody is of course not limited to JSON, both can handle multiple formats, including plain text and XML, but JSON is probably the most used format.

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Update

Ever since Spring 4.x, you usually won't use @ResponseBody on method level, but rather @RestController on class level, with the same effect.

Here is a quote from the official Spring MVC documentation:

@RestController is a composed annotation that is itself meta-annotated with @Controller and @ResponseBody to indicate a controller whose every method inherits the type-level @ResponseBody annotation and, therefore, writes directly to the response body versus view resolution and rendering with an HTML template.