Fastest way to deliver jsp views without xml-conf using spring project stub from start.spring.io

I am using spring again after a longer period and happy to see that xml configurations are no longer required in every case.

I want to build a RESTful App, but I still have to deliver the frontend app. I figured the simplest way without using any additional template engines like thymeleaf would be serving a static jsp.

I'm using the project template from start.spring.io with just spring-mvc as dependency, thus I'm using spring boot as well.

I wrote a controller in order to deliver the jsp, but it seems that the mapping for the views has to be configured first.

@Controller
public class StaticPagesController {

  @RequestMapping(value = "/")
  public String index(){
    return "index";
  }
}

So I created a configuration class:

@Configuration
@EnableWebMvc
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "de.tuberlin.sense.emp")
public class WebConfiguration {
    @Bean
    public ViewResolver viewResolver() {
        InternalResourceViewResolver viewResolver = new InternalResourceViewResolver();
        viewResolver.setViewClass(JstlView.class);
        viewResolver.setPrefix("/WEB-INF/views/");
        viewResolver.setSuffix(".html");

        return viewResolver;
    }
}

index.html is located in main/webapp/WEB-INF/views/

When I send a request to /, I get a WARN in the logs which states:

No mapping found for HTTP request with URI [/WEB-INF/views/index.html] in DispatcherServlet with name 'dispatcherServlet'

What am I missing? Can I do this without any xml configuration?

Here is my main application class code:

UPDATE:

@SpringBootApplication
public class ExperimentManagementPlatformApplication {

        public static void main(String[] args) {
            SpringApplication.run(ExperimentManagementPlatformApplication.class, args);
    }
}

I was able to serve the static page without needing any controller at all by just adding the html file to the static directory. Furthermore i found out that the entire webapp directory is not included when the app is deployed as jar which explains why the files in there could not be found.

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