Endpoint overloading in Rest controller

I have a REST Controller in my Spring Boot application as follows:

@RestController
public class StudentController {
    
    @Autowired
    private StudentDao studentDao;

    @GetMapping("/students")
    public List<Student> getAllStudents(){
        return studentDao.getStudent();
    }
    
    @GetMapping("/students")
    public Student getStudent(@RequestParam(name="id") int id){
        return studentDao.getStudent(id);
    }
}

Upon trying to start the application, I get the following error:

org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException: Error creating bean with name 'requestMappingHandlerMapping' defined in class path resource [org/springframework/boot/autoconfigure/web/servlet/WebMvcAutoConfiguration$EnableWebMvcConfiguration.class]: Invocation of init method failed; nested exception is java.lang.IllegalStateException: Ambiguous mapping. Cannot map 'studentController' method 
com.example.rest.webservice.restwebservice.StudentController#getStudent(int)
to {GET [/students]}: There is already 'studentController' bean met

Upon changing the endpoints(in the getmapping part), this works perfectly. I fail to understand that since it does not recognise one with query param and one without as 2 separate points, then what is the possible fix for this? I am still a beginner so it would be great if someone could help.

hod

Answer

Usually in REST when you want a list of all students you make it

@GetMapping("/students")

as you have done.

If you need just one one specific student by id the id is a path variable like:

@GetMapping("/students/{id}")
public Student getStudent(@PathVariable(name="id") int id)

So not exactly overloading.

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Answer