JSON output from Tridion Java DXA 1.7

Question

I have below requirement in my project using Java DXA 1.7, I am new to DXA. Can someone provide me which Component Template and Page Template should I use for my requirement?

Also how can I achieve my JSON output in my custom controller?

Schema Name: Custom Content

Fields in Schema:

• title - Text Field
• contentBody - RichText Box
• footerContent - Rich Text Box

When I request through http://mydomain.com/CustomController/MyPageName

My Desired Output should be as below JSON format:

{
    "title":"Some Title",
    "contentBody":"Some RichText Content",
    "footerContent: "Again Some RichText Content"
}

Answer 1

Your requirement is somewhat similar to this: How to render plain JSON (without any additional tag) data in DXA 1.5 java?

However, what you want seems to be more in line with what DXA is designed for. Nevertheless, you will need to use a custom Page Controller which returns the JSON you want.

The underlying data can be obtained from the Page Model: pageModel.getRegions().get(“Main”).getEntities(). This will return a set of Entity Models of a type which you defined (and registered).

You could use a regular Strongly Typed Entity Model, which uses individual properties for each field. Alternatively, you can use a special semantic mapping where all CM fields are mapped to a single property of type Map<String,String>. If you serialize such property to JSON, it will yield the output you’re looking for.

The DXA Framework comes with a predefined Entity Model type that uses this “all CM fields to single property” mapping: class Configuration. You can use this class instead of defining your own Entity Model.