title: Spring MVC & JQuery AJAX Post only working with @ResponseBody
body: <p>I have a button in a HTML page with JQuery 1.8.
  I'm using Spring MVC 4.1 to handle the requests.</p>
  
  <pre><code>      var test= "foo";
        $.ajax({
              type : "POST",
              async : false,
              url : "rest/ping",
              data : JSON.stringify(test),
              dataType : "json" ,
              contentType : "application/json",
              error : function(jqXHR, textStatus, errorThrown) {
                  alert(errorThrown + " -- " + jqXHR.responseText);
  
              },
              success : function(data) {
                  console.log("bar");
              }
          });
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The Spring side:</p>
  
  <pre><code>@Controller
  @RequestMapping("/test")
  public class DummyController {
  @RequestMapping(value = "/rest/ping", method = RequestMethod.POST)
  @ResponseBody
  public void ping(@RequestBody String test) throws ServiceException{
      // nothing of concern
  }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>If I remove the @ResponseBody the system cannot find the mapping. If I add '(required=false)' to the request body annotation then the mapping is found but the ajax call fails because after the mapped url is called, the system calls "test/rest/ping/rest/ping". </p>
  
  <p>If you have a documentation of JQuery and Spring MVC working together, please add them to this question. I'm not able to find a valid example describing exact this strange behaviour.
  If you have any questions, please ask.
  Thank you all for your time.</p>