ViewResolver in Spring MVC — Resolving View Names to Templates

Direct Answer

A ViewResolver turns a logical view name returned by a view-oriented @Controller into a View implementation. An InternalResourceViewResolver can map users to /WEB-INF/views/users.jsp; a Thymeleaf resolver can map it to a template. Response-body methods normally use HttpMessageConverters instead, although Spring MVC can be configured with other view/negotiation arrangements.

Code Example

@Controller
public class UserController {
    @Autowired
    private UserService userService;

    @GetMapping("/users")
    public String listUsers(Model model) {
        var users = userService.findAll();
        model.addAttribute("userList", users);
        return "users";  // logical view name
    }
}

// application.properties
spring.mvc.view.prefix=/WEB-INF/views/
spring.mvc.view.suffix=.jsp

// Spring Boot auto-configures InternalResourceViewResolver
// Resolves "users" → /WEB-INF/views/users.jsp
// The JSP template accesses ${userList} to render the HTML table

Common Mistakes & Pitfalls

• Using @Controller instead of @RestController for REST APIs: Freshers add ViewResolver config to a REST API project, then wonder why they get 404 errors. If you're returning JSON, use @RestController which has implicit @ResponseBody on every method — ViewResolver is never called.
• Forgetting template files in the classpath: You configure ThymeleafViewResolver but put templates in src/main/webapp instead of src/main/resources/templates. Spring Boot's default resolver looks in classpath:templates/, not webapp.
• Returning view names from @RestController methods: If you accidentally use @RestController and return a String, Spring treats it as the response body (literal string), not a view name. You'll see "userList" as plain text in the browser instead of rendered HTML.