Generic Spring MVC Controller with Inheritance - spring-mvc

Question

Can I do the following in Spring MVC
Suppose I have the Base GenericController as follows with one request mapping "/list"
#Controller
public class GenericController<T>{
#RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET, value = "/list")
public #ResponseBody List<T> getMyPage(){
// returns list of T
}
}
Below are my two controllers
#Controller(value = "/page1")
public class Page1Controller extends GenericController<Page1>{
}
#Controller(value = "/page2")
public class Page2Controller extends GenericController<Page2>{
}
Now will i be able to access the url "/page1/list" and "/page2/list" where first goes to Page1Controller and second goes to Page2Controller.

Answer 1

That's not possible and was already rejected, see SPR-10089. I think this would be somewhat confusing and in addition, it is very unlikely that those method behave exactly the same besides the different mapping.
But you can use delegation instead:
public class BaseController<T> {
public List<T> getPageList(){
// returns list of T
}
}
#Controller(value = "/page1")
public class Page1Controller extends BaseController<Page1>{
#RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET, value = "/list")
public #ResponseBody List<Page1> getMyPage() {
return super.getPageList();
}
}
#Controller(value = "/page2")
public class Page2Controller extends BaseController<Page2>{
#RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET, value = "/list")
public #ResponseBody List<Page2> getMyPage() {
return super.getPageList();
}
}

Answer 2

For those looking for something similar with Spring Framework 4.x, the class hierarchy provided by the OP is possible. A sample application is available on Github. It allows users to view a list of books or a list of magazines as JSON.