@Controller Vs @RestController - Spring

Hello everyone, I hope you all are doing well.Well, today we will discuss the difference between @Controller and @RestController

@Controller

The @Controller annotation  has been part of the framework for a very long time.@Controller annotation designates that the annotated class is a controller. It is a specialization of @Controller and is autodetected through classpath scanning. It is typically utilized in amalgamation with annotated handler methods predicated on the @RequestMapping annotation.

For example,

@Controller

@RequestMapping("users")

public class HomeController {

@GetMapping(produces = "application/json")

public @ResponseBody User getAllUsers() {

return findAllUsers();

}

}

The request handling method is annotated with @ResponseBody. This annotation enables automatic serialization of the return object into the HttpResponse.

@RestController

The @RestController annotation was introduced in Spring 4.0 to simplify the engenderment of RESTful web services. It's an convenience annotation that combines @Controller and @ResponseBody

For example,

@RestController

@RequestMapping("users")

public class HomeController {

@GetMapping(produces = "application/json")

public Book getAllUsers() {

return findAllUsers();

}

}

The controller is annotated with the @RestController annotation, consequently the @ResponseBody isn't required. Every request handling method of the controller class automatically serializes return objects into HttpResponse.

Conclusion

• @Controller is utilized to mark classes as Spring MVC Controller. 
• @RestController is an convenience annotation that does nothing more than integrating the @Controller and @ResponseBody annotations

So the following two controller definitions should do the same

@Controller

@ResponseBody

public class HomeController {

}

@RestController

public class HomeController {

}