How do you set cache headers in Spring MVC?

I just encountered the same problem, and found a good solution already provided by the framework. The org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.WebContentInterceptor class allows you to define default caching behaviour, plus path-specific overrides (with the same path-matcher behaviour used elsewhere). The steps for me were:

1. Ensure my instance of org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter does not have the “cacheSeconds” property set.

2. Add an instance of WebContentInterceptor:

   <mvc:interceptors>
   ...
   <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.WebContentInterceptor" p:cacheSeconds="0" p:alwaysUseFullPath="true" >
       <property name="cacheMappings">
           <props>
               <!-- cache for one month -->
               <prop key="/cache/me/**">2592000</prop>
               <!-- don't set cache headers -->
               <prop key="/cache/agnostic/**">-1</prop>
           </props>
       </property>
   </bean>
   ...
   </mvc:interceptors>
   

After these changes, responses under /foo included headers to discourage caching, responses under /cache/me included headers to encourage caching, and responses under /cache/agnostic included no cache-related headers.

If using a pure Java configuration:

@EnableWebMvc
@Configuration
public class WebMvcConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {
  /* Time, in seconds, to have the browser cache static resources (one week). */
  private static final int BROWSER_CACHE_CONTROL = 604800;

  @Override
  public void addResourceHandlers(ResourceHandlerRegistry registry) {
    registry
     .addResourceHandler("/images/**")
     .addResourceLocations("/images/")
     .setCachePeriod(BROWSER_CACHE_CONTROL);
  }
}

See also: http://docs.spring.io/spring-security/site/docs/current/reference/html/headers.html