Spring MVC: Complex object as GET @RequestParam

You can absolutely do that, just remove the @RequestParam annotation, Spring will cleanly bind your request parameters to your class instance:

public @ResponseBody List<MyObject> myAction(
    @RequestParam(value = "page", required = false) int page,
    MyObject myObject)

I will add some short example from me.

The DTO class:

public class SearchDTO {
    private Long id[];

    public Long[] getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public void setId(Long[] id) {
        this.id = id;
    }
    // reflection toString from apache commons
    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return ReflectionToStringBuilder.toString(this, ToStringStyle.SHORT_PREFIX_STYLE);
    }
}

Request mapping inside controller class:

@RequestMapping(value="/handle", method=RequestMethod.GET)
@ResponseBody
public String handleRequest(SearchDTO search) {
    LOG.info("criteria: {}", search);
    return "OK";
}

Query:

http://localhost:8080/app/handle?id=353,234

Result:

[http-apr-8080-exec-7] INFO  c.g.g.r.f.w.ExampleController.handleRequest:59 - criteria: SearchDTO[id={353,234}]

I hope it helps :)

UPDATE / KOTLIN

Because currently I'm working a lot of with Kotlin if someone wants to define similar DTO the class in Kotlin should have the following form:

class SearchDTO {
    var id: Array<Long>? = arrayOf()

    override fun toString(): String {
        // to string implementation
    }
}

With the data class like this one:

data class SearchDTO(var id: Array<Long> = arrayOf())

the Spring (tested in Boot) returns the following error for request mentioned in answer:

"Failed to convert value of type 'java.lang.String[]' to required type 'java.lang.Long[]'; nested exception is java.lang.NumberFormatException: For input string: \"353,234\""

The data class will work only for the following request params form:

http://localhost:8080/handle?id=353&id=234

Be aware of this!

Since the question on how to set fields mandatory pops up under each post, I wrote a small example on how to set fields as required:

public class ExampleDTO {
    @NotNull
    private String mandatoryParam;

    private String optionalParam;
    
    @DateTimeFormat(iso = ISO.DATE) //accept Dates only in YYYY-MM-DD
    @NotNull
    private LocalDate testDate;

    public String getMandatoryParam() {
        return mandatoryParam;
    }
    public void setMandatoryParam(String mandatoryParam) {
        this.mandatoryParam = mandatoryParam;
    }
    public String getOptionalParam() {
        return optionalParam;
    }
    public void setOptionalParam(String optionalParam) {
        this.optionalParam = optionalParam;
    }
    public LocalDate getTestDate() {
        return testDate;
    }
    public void setTestDate(LocalDate testDate) {
        this.testDate = testDate;
    }
}

//Add this to your rest controller class
@RequestMapping(value = "/test", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public String testComplexObject (@Valid ExampleDTO e){
    System.out.println(e.getMandatoryParam() + " " + e.getTestDate());
    return "Does this work?";
}