Set response header in Spring Boot

Question

How can I set the response header for each call in my application made with Spring Boot? I would like to try to use a filter to intercept all the calls and be able to set the response header. I followed the guide Disable browser caching HTML5, but only set the request header, and not always.

Solution

There are three ways to do this:

1. Set the response for a specific controller, in the Controller class:

   @Controller
   @RequestMapping(value = DEFAULT_ADMIN_URL + "/xxx/")
   public class XxxController
   ....
       @ModelAttribute
       public void setResponseHeader(HttpServletResponse response) {
          response.setHeader("Cache-Control", "no-cache");
          ....
       }
   

   or

   @RequestMapping(value = "/find/employer/{employerId}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
   public List getEmployees(@PathVariable("employerId") Long employerId, final HttpServletResponse response) {
       response.setHeader("Cache-Control", "no-cache");
       return employeeService.findEmployeesForEmployer(employerId);
   }
   

   2. Or you can put the response header for each call in the application (this is for Spring annotation-based, otherwise see automatically add header to every response):

   @Component
   public class Filter extends OncePerRequestFilter {
   ....
    @Override
    protected void doFilterInternal(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, FilterChain filterChain)
           throws ServletException, IOException {
       //response.addHeader("Access-Control-Allow-Origin", "*");
       //response.setHeader("Cache-Control", "no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate"); // HTTP 1.1.
       response.setHeader("Cache-Control", "no-store"); // HTTP 1.1.
       response.setHeader("Pragma", "no-cache"); // HTTP 1.0.
       response.setHeader("Expires", "0"); // Proxies.
       filterChain.doFilter(request, response);
    }
   }
   

   3. The last way I found is using an Interceptor that extends HandlerInterceptorAdapter; for more info see https://www.concretepage.com/spring/spring-mvc/spring-handlerinterceptor-annotation-example-webmvcconfigureradapter

      • create your Interceptor that extends HandlerInterceptorAdapter:

   public class HeaderInterceptor extends HandlerInterceptorAdapter {
   
     @Override
     public boolean preHandle(HttpServletRequest httpServletRequest, HttpServletResponse httpServletResponse, Object handler) {
       httpServletResponse.setHeader("Cache-Control", "no-store"); // HTTP 1.1.
       httpServletResponse.setHeader("Pragma", "no-cache"); // HTTP 1.0.
       httpServletResponse.setHeader("Expires", "0"); // Proxies.
       return true;
     }
   }
   

   • In your MvcConfig thath extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter you must Override the addInterceptors method and add new Interceptor:

   @Override
   public void addInterceptors(InterceptorRegistry registry) {
       ....
       registry.addInterceptor(new HeaderInterceptor());
   }
   

I hope I was helpful!

Comments

[Ali Niaki]

Option 2 is the best! Thank you.