How to set respond header values in Spring Boot rest service method? - spring

Question

Newbie question... I'm building my first Spring Boot restful service. My restful service design requires some data to be returned in the response header.
How do I set response header values inside my controller class method?

Answer 1

From the Spring Documentation:
#RequestMapping("/handle")
public ResponseEntity<String> handle() {
URI location = ...;
HttpHeaders responseHeaders = new HttpHeaders();
responseHeaders.setLocation(location);
responseHeaders.set("MyResponseHeader", "MyValue");
return new ResponseEntity<String>("Hello World", responseHeaders, HttpStatus.CREATED);
}
Source: https://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/javadoc-api/org/springframework/http/ResponseEntity.html

Answer 2

Unlike the other answer, don't use HttpServletResponse. You don't wanna be working with low-level Servlet APIs if you can avoid it. Return a ResponseEntity or HttpEntity.
HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
headers.add("1", "uno");
return new ResponseEntity<>(headers, HttpStatus.OK);

Answer 3

I was looking for an answer, and I don't like to have to create a response entity. I found the solution on the spring-forums, so credits to the writer.
In short, you can request the response in the method-declaration, so this can be populated.
A simple example:
#RequestMapping(value="/car/{carId}", method = RequestMethod.Get)
#ResponseBody
public Car getCarById(#PathVariable("carId") String Id, HttpServletResponse response) {
response.setHeader("X-Special-Header", myCar.getEcoLabel());
//get the car
return myCar;
}
Hope this helps others as well.
http://forum.spring.io/forum/spring-projects/web-services/102652-setting-header-values-with-spring-rest-controller

Answer 4

To set Response Header there are multiple ways:
As mentioned by #Matias Elorriaga, you can use this to add header to single response.
Or, To add header to all responses you can also add java Filters.
import java.io.IOException;
import javax.servlet.FilterChain;
import javax.servlet.FilterConfig;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.ServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.ServletResponse;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;
#javax.servlet.annotation.WebFilter(urlPatterns = {"/*"})
#Component
public class ResponseHeaderFilter implements javax.servlet.Filter {
#Override
public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response, FilterChain chain)
throws IOException, ServletException {
HttpServletResponse res = (HttpServletResponse) response;
res.setHeader("My-Custom-Header", "Header-Value-Here");
chain.doFilter(request, response);
}
#Override
public void init(FilterConfig filterConfig) throws ServletException {
}
#Override
public void destroy() {
}
}
Or, In Spring 5, you can also have WebFilter to add headers to all responses.
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;
import org.springframework.web.server.ServerWebExchange;
import org.springframework.web.server.WebFilter;
import org.springframework.web.server.WebFilterChain;
#Component
public class ResponseHeaderWebFilter implements WebFilter {
#Override
public Mono filter(ServerWebExchange exchange, WebFilterChain chain) {
exchange.getResponse().getHeaders().add("My-Custom-Header", "My-Value-Here");
return chain.filter(exchange);
}
}