AutoConfigure RestController Spring Boot

Question

I have tried to find documentation on how to manually configure a RestController (i.e in a Configuation class). That means without using the RestController annotation. Considering all the other annotations, like mapping, pathvariables etc. is at all possible?

Answer 1

A controller is essentially a component with a request mapping. See RequestMappingHandlerMapping.

    @Override
    protected boolean isHandler(Class<?> beanType) {
        return (AnnotatedElementUtils.hasAnnotation(beanType, Controller.class) ||
                AnnotatedElementUtils.hasAnnotation(beanType, RequestMapping.class));
    }

If you want to instantiate a "rest controller" through configuration, you can probably do so via the following:

@Configuration
public class MyConfiguration {
   @Bean
   public MyController() {
      return new MyController();
   }
}

@ResponseBody
public class MyController {
   @RequestMapping("/test")
   public String someEndpoint() {
      return "some payload";
   }
}

But I don't think you'll be able to configure the request mappings (path variables, etc) in the configuration though; at least I haven't seen an example nor figured out how.