Why is spring returning a HAL/HATEOAS response when calling a non-existent url? - spring-boot

Question

I am getting a response from localhost:8085/ponds when I have not set a controller for it... there is no mapping anywhere.
The even more weird thing is that when I go to localhost:8085/ponds I can see in the application that it's executing an SQL command.
I have searched online for where this _embedded is coming from and I have found something regarding a HAL and HATEOS, however, I have not implicitly implemented these anywhere.
I have ran a maven clean install and deploy in the terminal and I see this:
INFO 16328 --- [ main] o.s.d.r.w.RepositoryRestHandlerMapping : Mapped "{[/{repository}/{id}],methods=[GET],produces=[application/hal+json || application/json]}" onto public org.springframework.http.ResponseEntity> org.springframework.data.rest.webmvc.RepositoryEntityController.getItemResource(org.springframework.data.rest.webmvc.RootResourceInformation,java.io.Serializable,org.springframework.data.rest.webmvc.PersistentEntityResourceAssembler,org.springframework.http.HttpHeaders) throws org.springframework.web.HttpRequestMethodNotSupportedException
org.springframework.http.ResponseEntity<
org.springframework.hateoas.Resource>
This is the response in the browser:
{
"_embedded" : {
"ponds" : [ ]
},
"_links" : {
"self" : {
"href" : "http://localhost:8085/ponds"
},
"profile" : {
"href" : "http://localhost:8085/profile/ponds"
}
}
}
The last time I used SpringBoot was a good few months ago, if I tried to access a link/mapping/HTML page that I did not write a controller for, I would get a "page not found" page, not a response.
I am using SpringBoot 2.0.5.RELEASE
I do not understand why it's giving a response and not an error...
So I have commented:
<!--<dependency>-->
<!--<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>-->
<!--<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-rest</artifactId>-->
<!--</dependency>-->
And the response went away. I still don't understand why it's using the ResponseEntity, or why the ResponseEntity is actually returning that JSON...

Answer 1

spring-boot-starter-data-rest
There is no need for that dependency. I have removed it.
https://spring.io/guides/gs/accessing-data-rest/
This guide walks you through the process of creating an application that accesses relational JPA data through a hypermedia-based RESTful front end.