Thymeleaf 3 Spring 5 mapping loads String instead

Question

I'm trying to configure Spring 5 and Thymeleaf 3 together. I'm working on Eclipse, I build with 'clean install' and run the app with 'springboot:run'. I've setup a controller and a couple of templates but it seems that Thymeleaf cannot find them, in the browser it shows the template name (es. 'panda') instead of loading the template itself ('panda.html').

This is the folder structure:

In my controller I have the following mapping

@RestController
@Controller
public class MyController {

    @Autowired
    UtentiRepository utentiRepository;

    @GetMapping("/gab")
    public String panda(Model model) {

        return "panda";
    }
}

This is the template resolver's code

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@ComponentScan("it.uniroma3.spring")
public class MvcWebConfig implements WebMvcConfigurer {

    @Autowired
    private ApplicationContext applicationContext;

    @Bean
    public SpringResourceTemplateResolver templateResolver() {
        SpringResourceTemplateResolver templateResolver = new SpringResourceTemplateResolver();
        templateResolver.setApplicationContext(applicationContext);
        templateResolver.setPrefix("classpath:/templates/");
        templateResolver.setSuffix(".html");
        return templateResolver;
    }

    @Bean
    public SpringTemplateEngine templateEngine() {
        SpringTemplateEngine templateEngine = new SpringTemplateEngine();
        templateEngine.setTemplateResolver(templateResolver());
        templateEngine.setEnableSpringELCompiler(true);
        return templateEngine;
    }

    @Override
    public void configureViewResolvers(ViewResolverRegistry registry) {
        ThymeleafViewResolver resolver = new ThymeleafViewResolver();
        resolver.setTemplateEngine(templateEngine());
        registry.viewResolver(resolver);
    }
}

and ths is the pom.xml

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">

  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>it.uniroma3.progettosiw</groupId>
  <artifactId>progetto-siw</artifactId>
  <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <packaging>war</packaging>

  <parent>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
    <version>2.0.2.RELEASE</version>
    <relativePath/>
  </parent>

  <properties>
    <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
    <project.reporting.outputEncoding>UTF-8</project.reporting.outputEncoding>
    <java.version>1.8</java.version>
  </properties>

  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-data-jpa</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>javax.xml.bind</groupId>
      <artifactId>jaxb-api</artifactId>
      <version>2.2.11</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.sun.xml.bind</groupId>
      <artifactId>jaxb-core</artifactId>
      <version>2.2.11</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>com.sun.xml.bind</groupId>
      <artifactId>jaxb-impl</artifactId>
      <version>2.2.11</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-boot-devtools</artifactId>
      <scope>runtime</scope>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>mysql</groupId>
      <artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId>
      <scope>runtime</scope>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
      <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-thymeleaf</artifactId>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>

  <build>
    <sourceDirectory>src/main/java</sourceDirectory>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
      </plugin>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
        <artifactId>tomcat7-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        <version>2.2</version>
        <configuration>
          <path>/</path>
        </configuration>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>

</project>

Answer 1

@RestController implicitly puts @ResponseBody on your methods which in your case causes your returned String to be passed directly into the HttpResponse object (instead of being interpreted as a view name).

So just remove @RestController in MyController class.