Spring MVC very confused about controller mappings

Using annotation-based controller mappings.

@Controller
public class AlertsController {

  @RequestMapping(value="create", method=RequestMethod.GET)
  public void create(HttpServletRequest request, Model model) {
  }
}

When access alerts/create, I get the message Does your handler implement a supported interface like Controller?. This seems odd, and counter to what the documentation says.

So, I add in a RequestMapping to the class:

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/alerts")
public class AlertsController {

  @RequestMapping(value="create", method=RequestMethod.GET)
  public void create(HttpServletRequest request, Model model) {
  }
}

This, then, works. I shouldn't need either @RequestMapping, but I do. Now, things get weird. I really wanted to map this to `/profile/alerts', so I change it to this:

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/profile/alerts")
public class AlertsController {

  @RequestMapping(value="create", method=RequestMethod.GET)
  public void create(HttpServletRequest request, Model model) {
  }
}

I get a 404 when going to profile/alerts/create, but it's still mapped to /alerts/create for some reason?!?!?!

I change it to:

@Controller
@RequestMapping("foobar")
public class AlertsController {

  @RequestMapping(value="create", method=RequestMethod.GET)
  public void create(HttpServletRequest request, Model model) {
  }
}

This is very strange and incredibly inconvenient. Anyone have a way to fix this, or even debug what is going on?

In your first snippet you missed the leading /. It should be something like @RequestMapping(value="/create", method=RequestMethod.GET)

Now you should change your third snippet to this,

@Controller
public class AlertsController {

  @RequestMapping(value="/profile/alerts/create", method=RequestMethod.GET)
  public void create(HttpServletRequest request, Model model) {
  }
}

Moreover, as you are making your method void which expect the DispatcherServlet to fall back on the default view name of "profile/alerts/create". And then it is combined with a suitable view resolver. For example,

<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.InternalResourceViewResolver">
    <property name="prefix" value="/WEB-INF/jsp/" />
    <property name="suffix" value=".jsp" />
</bean>

And there you got 404, may be.

You can do url matching on both the class annotation and more finegrained on the methods. The class level annotation gets prepended to the method level annotation

@Controller
@RequestMapping(value = "/admin")
public class AdminController {

  @RequestMapping(value = "/users", method = RequestMethod.GET)
  /* matches on /admin/users */
  public string users() {  ...  }
}

It's very close to your original third snippet except you forgot a leading /.