Spring MVC 3 Return Content-Type: text/plain

Question

I want to display simple text on a page and as such I want to return the Content-Type as text/plain.

Using the code below, I see plain text on the page, however the return Content-Type is still text/html.

How can I fix this?

NOTE: I'm using Tiles with Spring MVC. The returned "m.health" points to a tiles def that maps to a health.jsp which only contains the 1 line below.

UPDATE NOTE: I have no control over the Content-Type or Accept values in the HTTP Header request. I want my response to return text/plain no matter what kind of request comes in.

Controller:

@RequestMapping(value = "/m/health", method = RequestMethod.GET, headers = "Accept=*")
public String runHealthCheck(HttpServletResponse response, HttpServletRequest request, Model model) throws Exception {
    model = executeCheck(request, response, TEMPLATE, false, model);
    model.addAttribute("accept", "text/plain");
    response.setContentType("text/plain");
    response.setCharacterEncoding("UTF-8");
    return "m.health";
}

JSP:

${status}

Snailpaced

Answer 1

It should work if you annotate your method additionally with @ResponseBody:

@RequestMapping(value = "/",
                method = RequestMethod.GET)
@ResponseBody
public String plaintext(HttpServletResponse response) {
    response.setContentType("text/plain");
    response.setCharacterEncoding("UTF-8");
    return "TEXT";
}

Merwyn

For anyone visiting this question, Markus added his reply after Ali accepted, but this is the correct approach when using annotations. It is simple and works well. – Eclecticism

It does not work. If you use @ResponseBody, Spring will rewrite Content Type by "application/json" – Snowbird

This didn't work for me either. For me, it's still coming out as "text/html". – Hemstitch

Doesn't work for me. I get a 404 error (which contains the returned string.) – Vibrant

For anyone else replying here that it doesn't work, this IS the correct approach, and will work by default. Review the documentation on the StringHttpMessageConverter for more information. – Eclecticism

I still have application/json type in response. I guess because i have Jackson in the classpath. – Allocution

Answer 2

You could try to set the produces value of your @RequestMapping annotation with text/plain. The Spring documentation lists this as a sample.

Vierno

I have no control over what Content-Type is set in the request and produces will not match if the request type is not what I set in it. I basically want to return text/plain no matter what the request type is. – Snailpaced