SpringBoot Request Mapping not working as expected

Question

I am new to spring boot and trying to make a starter application ran into this issue, the code is simple:

@RestController
public class MovieController {
    @RequestMapping("/")
    public String allMovies(){
        return "All Movies";
    }
}

I would expect this code to display All Movies when i go to localhoast:8080/ but it just shows me the boilerplate no explicit mapping for error. This is a fresh project i changed nothing during the while process i just have some other classes but none of them interfere with this class. The project is here: https://github.com/hozaifaO/Movie-Review . Another note to add is that i have a similar boiler plate starter project with the same code and that one works the only difference is that this one has mongodb as a dependency. Any help is appreciated.

I was expecting a string msg but i was greeted by boilerplate error mapping page.

UPDATE: Changing the code to this did not work.

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/movies")
public class MovieController {
    @GetMapping()
    public String allMovies(){
        return "All Movies";
    }
}

However, i did try to do this in a different class so i made the mapping happen in the Application class and it works if i do it in that class but i dont want to. Here is the code from that class,

@SpringBootApplication
@RestController
@RequestMapping("/abc")
public class MovieReviewApplication {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(MovieReviewApplication.class, args);

    }
    @GetMapping
    public String root(){
        return "Movies";
    }
}

All the code can be seen on the Github page link above including the pom file. Video of me running the software and showing whats wrong https://www.veed.io/view/3b14100c-c541-4d0d-9ffd-477439c3747e?panel=share

Answer 1

@RequestMapping is both a a class level & method level annotation. At class level ,it is used to create base URI. Every URI specified in method level annotation is appended to base URI specified on the top of the class.The URI specified at method level is added to clearly define or identify that the specific method of the class has been made request to. In addition you can use ,path parameters, method=get/post/put etc attributes in method level annotation. The new way of implementing method level annotation is @GetMapping/@PostMapping.

You need to specify baseURI @ class level & Can use @Getmapping or @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET) at method level.

Missing class level annotation is causing the issue.

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/")
public class MovieController {
   
    @GetMapping
    public String allMovies(){
        return "All Movies";
    }
}

Answer 2

put this

@RequestMapping("/") on top of the class and rename it to movies this method can look like this

@GetMapping
public String allMovies(){
    return "All Movies";
}

Answer 3

Your code is working fine. You need to mention movies in url like this "http://localhost:8080/movies". You are accessing "http://localhost:8080/". Since your url is incomplete ,you are getting default error page

Answer 4

Try to split the second class

@SpringBootApplication
@RestController
@RequestMapping("/abc")
public class MovieReviewApplication {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(MovieReviewApplication.class, args);

    }
    @GetMapping
    public String root(){
        return "Movies";
    }
}

into two different classes, first one is for running spring boot application with @SpringBootApplication annotation, BUT without any mapping methods,

@SpringBootApplication
public class MovieReviewApplication {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(MovieReviewApplication.class, args);

    }

}

and second new one only with mapping

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/test")
public class TestController {

    @GetMapping
    public String oneOfMyControllerMethod(){
        return "Movies";
    }
}

and test it locally

Answer 5

I ended up Just restarting with a new project and choosing the same dependencies and it seems to work. Not too sure what exactly was causing the issue but it i suspect it was not a programming issue.