Let's create a simple Spring MVC controller, as follows:

   @Controller 
   public class BasicController { 
      
      @RequestMapping(value = "/welcome") 
      @ResponseBody 
      public String welcome() { 
         return "Welcome to Spring MVC"; 
      } 
   
   }

The following definitions explain the code in detail:

• @Controller: This defines a Spring MVC controller that can contain request mappings—mapping URLs to controller methods.
• @RequestMapping(value = "/welcome"): This defines a mapping of the /welcome URL to the welcome method. When the browser sends a request to /welcome, Spring MVC does the magic and executes the welcome method.
• @ResponseBody: In this specific context, the text returned by the welcome method is sent out to the browser as the response content. @ResponseBody does a lot of magic—especially in the context of REST services. We will discuss this further in Chapter 6, Building REST APIs with Spring.