Please add REST support to Spring-WS

[jakain]

Here is a common requirement:

I have an existing Spring Web Service that I want to add REST support to

Now looking at Spring 3 this means I need to go off and start using Spring MVC instead? This seems crazy. I understand the part about having to copy most of the logic from the Spring-MVC DispatcherServlet over to Spring-WS however having my service support SOAP and REST is massively beneficial and I simply don't understand why it is so difficult. Basically the only difference is that you don't need to worry about stripping the SOAP envelope off surely? I'd expect to be able to REST enable my web service simply by doing something with the mappings, or am I dreaming here?

[kanayo]

You are certainly not dreaming. I too have had a situation where i was required to expose a service as both a restful web service and a soap web service. I ended up using spring web services for the soap web service and then using Jersey for the REST web service. Ideally it would have been great to be able expose the same service as a Soap and Restful service using spring and Spring web services is a good candidate for this. So i agree with you, REST support should be included in spring web services so you can do REST without having to use spring mvc.