What is the DispatcherServlet in Spring MVC?

DispatcherServlet is the single front controller that every incoming HTTP request in a Spring MVC application passes through first. It doesn't contain business logic itself; instead it coordinates the whole request-handling pipeline - consulting handler mappings, invoking interceptors, calling your controller method, and choosing how to render the result.

flowchart LR
    A[HTTP Request] --> B[DispatcherServlet]
    B --> C[HandlerMapping]
    C --> D[Controller method]
    D --> E[ViewResolver or Message Converter]
    E --> F[HTTP Response]

In a Spring Boot app, DispatcherServlet is registered and configured automatically by auto-configuration, mapped to / by default. For a @RestController, it skips view resolution entirely and hands the return value straight to an HttpMessageConverter to be written as JSON or another format.

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