Which controller for Spring Boot MVC?

Question

For a normal MVC controller which annotation do I want? Both are on the classpath.

org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.Controller;

I'm using

    <parent>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
        <version>3.4.2</version>
    </parent>

    <dependencyManagement>
        <dependencies>
            <dependency>
                <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-framework-bom</artifactId>
                <version>6.2.2</version>
                <type>pom</type>
                <scope>import</scope>
            </dependency>
        </dependencies>
    </dependencyManagement>

Answer 1

• org.springframework.stereotype.Controller is an annotation
• org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.Controller is an interface.

Hence there is no choice to make as there is only 1 annotation for this (not including @RestController which is a further specialization of the @Controller for rest based controllers).

PRO-TIP: Ditch the spring-framework-bom as Spring Boot already manages your Spring version, this setup you now have will complicate upgrading.