Spring MVC @RestController and redirect

Came across this question and was surprised that no-one mentioned RedirectView. I have just tested it, and you can solve this in a clean 100% spring way with:

@RestController
public class FooController {

    @RequestMapping("/foo")
    public RedirectView handleFoo() {
        return new RedirectView("some-url");
    }
}

To avoid any direct dependency on HttpServletRequest or HttpServletResponse I suggest a "pure Spring" implementation returning a ResponseEntity like this:

HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
headers.setLocation(URI.create(newUrl));
return new ResponseEntity<>(headers, HttpStatus.MOVED_PERMANENTLY);

If your method always returns a redirect, use ResponseEntity<Void>, otherwise whatever is returned normally as generic type.

Add an HttpServletResponse parameter to your Handler Method then call response.sendRedirect("some-url");

Something like:

@RestController
public class FooController {

  @RequestMapping("/foo")
  void handleFoo(HttpServletResponse response) throws IOException {
    response.sendRedirect("some-url");
  }

}

redirect means http code 302, which means Found in springMVC.

Here is an util method, which could be placed in some kind of BaseController:

protected ResponseEntity found(HttpServletResponse response, String url) throws IOException { // 302, found, redirect,
    response.sendRedirect(url);
    return null;
}

---

But sometimes might want to return http code 301 instead, which means moved permanently.

In that case, here is the util method:

protected ResponseEntity movedPermanently(HttpServletResponse response, String url) { // 301, moved permanently,
    return ResponseEntity.status(HttpStatus.MOVED_PERMANENTLY).header(HttpHeaders.LOCATION, url).build();
}