JSP file does not load in browser but file name is displayed as String in browser in spring Boot Application

Question

index.jsp or any .jsp file (.html files as well), I can't display in the browser rather file name is displayed as a string in the browser when I use string type method for index method. However, if I use ModelAndView class then it works fine. How I can display a page using string type method ? I have gone through lots of examples and visited many sites including stackoverflow.com. Bellow all related files:

1. Controller Class

   @SpringBootApplication
   public class DemoApplication {
   
   public static void main(String[] args) {
   SpringApplication.run(DemoApplication.class, args);}
   

2. @RestController
   public class AppController extends SpringBootServletInitializer {
   
   /*following method don't works*/
   @RequestMapping("/home")
   public String index(){
   return "index";
   }
   /*following method works fine*/
   /*   @RequestMapping("/home")
   public ModelAndView modelAndView(){
   return new ModelAndView("index");
   }*/
   }
   

3. POM.xml

   <dependency>
       <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
       <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
   </dependency>
   
   <!-- JSTL for JSP -->
   <dependency>
       <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
       <artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
   </dependency>
   
   <!-- Need this to compile JSP -->
   <dependency>
       <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
       <artifactId>tomcat-embed-jasper</artifactId>
       <scope>provided</scope>
   </dependency>
   

4. Application.properties

   spring.mvc.view.prefix=/WEB-INF/jsp/
   spring.mvc.view.suffix=.jsp
   

5. Output:

The expected page should be as follows: Folder location is ok. I tried many times with different IDE and various combination of file location, and all dependency in pom. But every time getting error.

Answer 1

This is happening because the @RestController is sending the response to the browser body so to return JSP page use @Controller annotation instead.

Change @RestController to @Controller.

• @Controller is used to mark classes as Spring MVC Controller.
• @RestController is a convenience annotation that does nothing more than adding the @Controller and @ResponseBody annotations (see: [Javadoc][1])

See difference between both. Difference between spring @Controller and @RestController annotation

Answer 2

This happens due to @RestController annotation as this is used when we want to return things in JSON. --> You can change the annotation to @Controller else return Model containing your JSP file