Spring MVC uses HttpMessageConverter to convert the Http request to an object representation and back.Spring Framework then uses one of the Jackson message converters to marshall and unmarshall Java Objects to and from JSON over HTTP.Spring will use the “Accept” header to determine the media type that it needs to respond with and uses the “Content-Type” header to determine the media type of the request body.

Default Message Converters in Spring MVC
StringHttpMessageConverter: it converts Strings from the HTTP request and response.
FormHttpMessageConverter: it converts form data to/from a MultiValueMap.
ByteArrayHttpMessageConverter: it converts byte arrays from the HTTP request and response.
MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter: it converts JSON from the HTTP request and response.
Jaxb2RootElementHttpMessageConverter: it converts Java objects to/from XML.
SourceHttpMessageConverter: it converts javax.xml.transform.Source from the HTTP request and response.
AtomFeedHttpMessageConverter: it converts Atom feeds.
RssChannelHttpMessageConverter: it converts RSS feeds.

Customizing HttpMessageConverters with Spring MVC