java - Spring 4 vs Jersey for REST web services

Question

We are planning to make a new application with spring 4.0.6 version. We use controller that can return "XML" or "JSON". In the previous project we have successfully implemented Jersey with Spring for REST support using JAX-RS API, but after reading a few articles and suggestions from seniors they said spring is providing pretty good REST support.

Some of the points that really confused me if I use Spring REST support without using JAX-RS and Jersey are:

1. How marshaling and unmarshaling done in Spring MVC ?

2. Is it necessary for marshaling or unmarshaling need to use jax-rs.

3. If marshaling and unmarshaling are automatically handled by spring then how does it know about xmlRootElements.

I am still confused if Spring proving very good support of REST then why do people still go with Jersey for REST? Really looking to know more in details.

If I said anything wrong please ignore it. Explanation with example is really helpful.

Thanks in advance!!

Answer 1

I'd say both Jersey and Spring MVC are great - each project has its own style and strengths. Anyway, Stack Overflow is not the right place for asking subjective comparisons (your question would be closed quite quickly). If you're already using Spring for everything else and are not required to use JAX-RS, then Spring MVC makes total sense.

Regarding features like (un)marshalling, JAX-RS is just a spec after all - other libraries can offer similar features without implementing the same API.

1. Instead of MessageBodyReaders/Writers, Spring MVC is using HttpMessageConverters to handle (un)marshalling REST resources. Spring MVC handles content negotiation and chooses the best available converter for the job (you can annotate methods to hint at what media type they produce/consume).

2. No, it's not necessary to use JAX-RS to (un)marshall resources. In fact, JAX-RS implementations and Spring MVC use third party serialization libraries to do the job; so it's not tied to a particular standard.

3. In its 4.0.6 version, Spring supports many HttpMessageConverters, with Jackson for JSON, JAXB for XML and many others. Spring 4.1.0 added more HttpMessageConverters:

   • Jackson is now available for both JSON and XML
   • Google Protobuf
   • Gson for JSON, as an alternative to Jackson

To answer your last point, @XmlRootElement is a JAXB annotation and is not part of JAX-RS. Spring supports JAXB.

For a more complete example with REST in Spring, check out this getting started guide (you'll get a complete example running in 10-15 minutes).

Again the last part of your question is quite subjective - there are many popular solutions for building REST services in the JVM, not just Jersey and Spring (Dropwizard, Play! Framework, etc).