What I am supposed to return from a server-side method called by ajax? - ajax

Question

I have the following jQuery script:
$(document).ready(function() {
$("#resendActivationEmailLink").bind("click", function(event) {
$.get($(this).attr("href"), function() {
$("#emailNotActivated").html("<span>not yet activated. email sent!</span>");
}, "html");
event.preventDefault();
});
});
Basically, when a user clicks a link the following server-side method is invoked:
#RequestMapping(value = "/resendActivationEmail/{token}", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces = "application/json")
public #ResponseBody
String resendActivationEmail(#PathVariable("token") String token) {
preferencesService.resendActivationEmail(token);
return "dummy";
}
and some business logic is executed on the server but there is no real outcome from the server to be used on the client/browser side apart from an ajax success or an ajax failure.
Now what I am really not sure about is what my server-side method is supposed to return!
Currently it just returns the string dummy but of course this is only temporary. Should I go for no return type (void) or null or something else??
Note that I can change the datatype parameter of the jQuery get method.
EDIT:
I have altered my server-side method as follows:
#RequestMapping(value = "/resendActivationEmail/{token}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public #ResponseBody void resendActivationEmail(#PathVariable("token") String token) {
preferencesService.resendActivationEmail(token);
}
#ResponseBody is required because this is an ajax call.

Answer 1

There is no point in returning a dummy value in this case. If you are not doing anything with the return value, then you can just do something like this:
#RequestMapping(value="/resendActivationEmail/{token}", method=RequestMethod.GET)
#ResponseStatus(org.springframework.http.HttpStatus.NO_CONTENT)
public void resendActivationEmail(#PathVariable String token) {
preferencesService.resendActivationEmail(token);
}
There will be a 204 response code instead of a 200 but that should be fine.

Answer 2

I'm assuming you are returning JSON from the server (from your server code: produces = "application/json").
Since you don't care about what gets returned, i.e. you are not handling the return value in your callback function, after $.get, then you can just return "{}", or if you want to handle the response you can go with something like:
{ "success": true }
// or
{ "error": "Error messages here" }