Another simple way to return JSON object is by using jackson-mapper-asl. Similar to how we can map server-bound post, this method can also be used to write response.

Firstly, on your Spring MVC enabled project, add following maven dependency:

  org.codehaus.jackson
  jackson-mapper-asl
  1.9.12

Spring can automatically convert your POJO into a json string. So say we have this data object we want to return:

public class Customer {
  private String name = "";
  private String email = "";
  // getters & setters...
}

And this is the controller request mapping method. Important bits here is the method returns a POJO object directly, and it is annotated with annotation.

("/customer/{id}")

public Customer getCustomer(("id") long id) {
  Customer customer = // Search customer by given id through repository..
  return customer;
}

On the client side the returned JSON will be something like this:

{
  name = "Tom",
  email = ""
}