Spring Boot version 1.5.9 app does not open view file, not found error 404 - spring

Question

I have a problem at displaying view file in Spring Boot with version 1.5.9 (the latest version). I created the project from Spring Initializr. I searched everywhere about the probelm in the internet. I tried many different ways but I could not make the view file displayed so I decided to ask here as the last option.
Here is my settings and code:
pom.xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>com.eric</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
<version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
<packaging>jar</packaging>
<name>spring-boot-starter</name>
<description>Demo project for Spring Boot</description>
<parent>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
<version>1.5.9.RELEASE</version>
<relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
</parent>
<properties>
<project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
<project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
<java.version>1.8</java.version>
</properties>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-security</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>mysql</groupId>
<artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>
<scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.security</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-security-test</artifactId>
<scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
<build>
<plugins>
<plugin>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
SpringBootStarterApplication.java
package com.eric.springbootstarter;
import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.web.ErrorMvcAutoConfiguration;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
#SpringBootApplication(exclude = ErrorMvcAutoConfiguration.class)
public class SpringBootStarterApplication{
public static void main(String[] args) {
SpringApplication.run(SpringBootStarterApplication.class, args);
}
}
LoginController.java
package com.eric.springbootstarter;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;
import org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView;
#Controller
public class LoginController {
#RequestMapping(value="/giris", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public ModelAndView giris(){
ModelAndView modelAndView = new ModelAndView();
modelAndView.setViewName("index");
return modelAndView;
}
}
In the console tab, I get this log:
2017-12-25 18:49:44.874 INFO 8740 --- [ main] j.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean : Building JPA container EntityManagerFactory for persistence unit 'default'
2017-12-25 18:49:44.892 INFO 8740 --- [ main] o.hibernate.jpa.internal.util.LogHelper : HHH000204: Processing PersistenceUnitInfo [
name: default
...]
2017-12-25 18:49:44.995 INFO 8740 --- [ main] org.hibernate.Version : HHH000412: Hibernate Core {5.0.12.Final}
2017-12-25 18:49:44.997 INFO 8740 --- [ main] org.hibernate.cfg.Environment : HHH000206: hibernate.properties not found
2017-12-25 18:49:44.998 INFO 8740 --- [ main] org.hibernate.cfg.Environment : HHH000021: Bytecode provider name : javassist
2017-12-25 18:49:45.052 INFO 8740 --- [ main] o.hibernate.annotations.common.Version : HCANN000001: Hibernate Commons Annotations {5.0.1.Final}
2017-12-25 18:49:45.223 INFO 8740 --- [ main] org.hibernate.dialect.Dialect : HHH000400: Using dialect: org.hibernate.dialect.MySQL5Dialect
2017-12-25 18:49:45.625 INFO 8740 --- [ main] org.hibernate.tool.hbm2ddl.SchemaUpdate : HHH000228: Running hbm2ddl schema update
2017-12-25 18:49:45.805 INFO 8740 --- [ main] j.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean : Initialized JPA EntityManagerFactory for persistence unit 'default'
2017-12-25 18:49:46.631 INFO 8740 --- [ main] s.w.s.m.m.a.RequestMappingHandlerAdapter : Looking for #ControllerAdvice: org.springframework.web.context.support.GenericWebApplicationContext#32b260fa: startup date [Mon Dec 25 18:49:41 EET 2017]; root of context hierarchy
2017-12-25 18:49:46.779 INFO 8740 --- [ main] s.w.s.m.m.a.RequestMappingHandlerMapping : Mapped "{[/giris],methods=[GET]}" onto public org.springframework.web.servlet.ModelAndView com.eric.springbootstarter.LoginController.giris()
2017-12-25 18:49:46.834 INFO 8740 --- [ main] o.s.w.s.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping : Mapped URL path [/webjars/**] onto handler of type [class org.springframework.web.servlet.resource.ResourceHttpRequestHandler]
2017-12-25 18:49:46.835 INFO 8740 --- [ main] o.s.w.s.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping : Mapped URL path [/**] onto handler of type [class org.springframework.web.servlet.resource.ResourceHttpRequestHandler]
2017-12-25 18:49:46.906 INFO 8740 --- [ main] o.s.w.s.handler.SimpleUrlHandlerMapping : Mapped URL path [/**/favicon.ico] onto handler of type [class org.springframework.web.servlet.resource.ResourceHttpRequestHandler]
2017-12-25 18:49:46.954 INFO 8740 --- [ main] oConfiguration$WelcomePageHandlerMapping : Adding welcome page: ServletContext resource [/index.html]
2017-12-25 18:49:47.514 INFO 8740 --- [ main] o.s.s.web.DefaultSecurityFilterChain : Creating filter chain: OrRequestMatcher [requestMatchers=[Ant [pattern='/**']]], []
2017-12-25 18:49:47.614 INFO 8740 --- [ main] o.s.s.web.DefaultSecurityFilterChain : Creating filter chain: org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.security.SpringBootWebSecurityConfiguration$ApplicationNoWebSecurityConfigurerAdapter$1#41bfa9e9, [org.springframework.security.web.context.request.async.WebAsyncManagerIntegrationFilter#68b7d0ef, org.springframework.security.web.context.SecurityContextPersistenceFilter#59c500f7, org.springframework.security.web.header.HeaderWriterFilter#40ed1802, org.springframework.security.web.csrf.CsrfFilter#2b736fee, org.springframework.security.web.authentication.logout.LogoutFilter#721d5b74, org.springframework.security.web.savedrequest.RequestCacheAwareFilter#50110971, org.springframework.security.web.servletapi.SecurityContextHolderAwareRequestFilter#73c48264, org.springframework.security.web.authentication.AnonymousAuthenticationFilter#7069f076, org.springframework.security.web.session.SessionManagementFilter#7f42e06e, org.springframework.security.web.access.ExceptionTranslationFilter#1b7f06c7]
2017-12-25 18:49:48.040 INFO 8740 --- [ main] .y.s.s.SpringBootStarterApplicationTests : Started SpringBootStarterApplicationTests in 6.593 seconds (JVM running for 7.71)
Tests run: 1, Failures: 0, Errors: 0, Skipped: 0, Time elapsed: 6.901 sec - in com.eric.springbootstarter.SpringBootStarterApplicationTests
2017-12-25 18:49:48.223 INFO 8740 --- [ Thread-3] o.s.w.c.s.GenericWebApplicationContext : Closing org.springframework.web.context.support.GenericWebApplicationContext#32b260fa: startup date [Mon Dec 25 18:49:41 EET 2017]; root of context hierarchy
2017-12-25 18:49:48.230 INFO 8740 --- [ Thread-3] j.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean : Closing JPA EntityManagerFactory for persistence unit 'default'
index.html file is located in src/main/resources/templates folder. I did not put it in a folder like "webapp/WEB-INF/views" because it is old and deprecated. Spring Boot handles all I presume.
You have any suggestion what else can I do? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I found the reason of not resolving view. I am writing this post for those who might have the same problem like me so they can utilize from this page. I see that there is no information regarding the problem in the internet.
I included these two modules in pom.xml
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.tomcat.embed</groupId>
<artifactId>tomcat-embed-jasper</artifactId>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
<artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
</dependency>
You can prefer doing it with Thymeleaf as this is not the only option.

Answer 2

Spring needs view resolver in order to render templates. You can add for example Thymeleaf and it should work:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf</artifactId>
</dependency>