SPRING MVC 3 - NOT displaying image in JSP - spring

Question

I have a controller serving images from an external directory (say c:\images\userID\photo.png), and this controller does its job very well. However, the img tag in my JSP file shows the image icon instead of the image returned by this controller.
Here's my controller:
#RequestMapping(value = "/load/{imageId}/", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public ResponseEntity<byte[]> loadImage(#PathVariable("imageId") Long imageId, HttpServletRequest request)
{
final org.springframework.http.HttpHeaders headers = new org.springframework.http.HttpHeaders();
BufferedImage image;
Photo photo = photoManager.getSinglePhoto(imageId);
headers.setContentType(MediaType.IMAGE_PNG);
try
{
if (photo == null)
{
File defaultFile = new File("c:/images/default.png");
image = ImageIO.read(defaultFile);
return new ResponseEntity<byte[]>(((DataBufferByte)image.getData().getDataBuffer()).getData(), headers, HttpStatus.CREATED);
}
File file = new File(photo.getPath());
image = ImageIO.read(file);
return new ResponseEntity<byte[]>(((DataBufferByte)image.getData().getDataBuffer()).getData(), headers, HttpStatus.CREATED);
}
catch (IOException ex)
{
return new ResponseEntity<byte[]>(null, headers, HttpStatus.NOT_FOUND);
}
}
I have found reading other answers here, that I need to include messageConverters in my application context, and I did it.
Here's a portion of my application-context.xml
<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter">
<property name="messageConverters">
<util:list>
<bean id="byteArrayMessageConverter" class="org.springframework.http.converter.ByteArrayHttpMessageConverter" />
</util:list>
</property>
</bean>
The eclipse XML editor complains about MethodHandlerAdapter being deprecated.
JSP:
<img src="/mavenspringapp/photo/load/131/" width="128" height="128" alt="laf02.jpg">
Why isn't the image getting displayed even when the controller sends the response correctly (201). Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

A little bit of googling tells me that HTTP 201 means created.
If the image exists, why are you sending a response code telling the client you just created the image?
I don't know for sure how web browsers handle it, but perhaps try changing your response codes to 200, as you aren't really creating anything.

Answer 2

The problem was in the controller method. Apparently loading the image the way I did it, is not correctly done. So I modified my method as shown below:
#RequestMapping(value = "/load/{imageId}/", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public ResponseEntity<byte[]> loadImage(#PathVariable("imageId") Long imageId, HttpServletRequest request)
{
final org.springframework.http.HttpHeaders headers = new org.springframework.http.HttpHeaders();
Photo photo = photoManager.getSinglePhoto(imageId);
headers.setContentType(MediaType.IMAGE_PNG);
try
{
if (photo == null)
{
File defaultFile = new File("c:/images/default.png");
byte[] content = FileUtils.readFileToByteArray(defaultFile);
return new ResponseEntity<byte[]>(content, headers, HttpStatus.OK);
}
File file = new File(photo.getPath());
byte[] content = FileUtils.readFileToByteArray(file);
return new ResponseEntity<byte[]>(content, headers, HttpStatus.OK);
}
catch (IOException ex)
{
return new ResponseEntity<byte[]>(null, headers, HttpStatus.NOT_FOUND);
}
}
And now it works great! I hope this helps somebody else. Thank you all for your replies.

Answer 3

You may consider the alternative instead of controller displaying the images you can directly access images your jsp for this you need to put the the mapping information in your spring configuration xml like
<mvc:resources mapping="/image/**" location="file:///D:/images/" /> and in your jsp file you can directly can directly call
<img src="<spring:url value='/images/logo.png'/>" /> and make sure your have mentioned the spring tag in your jsp
<%#taglib uri="http://www.springframework.org/tags" prefix="spring"%>