Spring MVC + jQuery Datatables + JSON Response
<p>I have a Spring MVC application using jQuery Datatables to render the data.
Here are my classes and javascript code</p>

<p><strong>Employee.java</strong></p>

<pre><code>public class Employee {
    private int empId ;
    private String firstName;
    private String lastName ;

    // getters and setters
}
</code></pre>

<p><strong>EmployeeResponse.java</strong></p>

<pre><code>public class EmployeeResponse {

    private List&lt;Employee&gt; empList ; 

    // getters and setters

}
</code></pre>

<p><strong>EmployeeController.java</strong></p>

<pre><code>@Controller
@RequestMapping("/admin")
public class EmployeeController {

    @RequestMapping(value = "/get-all-employee", method = RequestMethod.POST, consumes = { MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE })
    @ResponseBody
    public EmployeeResponse getAllEmployee(HttpServletRequest request) {
        EmployeeResponse response = new EmployeeResponse();
        try {

            response = getAllEmployeeList(); // returns response object

        } catch (Exception e) {
            logger.error("DCConsoleController::createNewStream exception: " + com.priceline.utils.StringUtils.getStackTrace(e));
            return null;
        }
        return response ; 
    }
}
</code></pre>

<p><strong>emp.jsp</strong></p>

<pre><code>&lt;div class="row"&gt;
    &lt;table id="ldapStreamTable" class="table"&gt;
        &lt;thead&gt;
            &lt;tr&gt;
                &lt;th&gt;Emp Id&lt;/th&gt;
                &lt;th&gt;First Name&lt;/th&gt;
                &lt;th&gt;Last Name&lt;/th&gt;
            &lt;/tr&gt;
        &lt;/thead&gt;
    &lt;/table&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
</code></pre>

<p><strong>emp.js</strong></p>

<pre><code>$(document).ready(function() {
    var table = $('#appTable').DataTable( {
        "sDom" : domSetting,
        "oLanguage" : {
            "sLengthMenu" : "_MENU_ records per page",
            "sSearch" : "&lt;span class='add-on'&gt;&lt;i class='icon-search'&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;/span&gt;Search Application:",
            "sZeroRecords" : "No matching records found",
        },
        "iDisplayLength" : 10,
        "aLengthMenu" : [
                [ 5, 10, 20, 25, 50, -1 ],
                [ 5, 10, 20, 25, 50, "All" ] ],
        "aaSorting" : [ [ 0, 'asc' ] ],
        'sAjaxSource': '{context}/admin/get-all-employee',
        [Pending here]
    });
});
</code></pre>

<p>What should I do to get the response as json and apply/use render methods for each column to render the data into the table?</p>

<p>[Note: looks like I can't use aoColumns' with mData for each column because my json response is list of employee objects]</p>

<p>Update - 1: Sample json below</p>

<pre><code>{"empList":[{"empId":3,"firstName":"Kiran","lastName":"Kumar"},{"empId":1,"firstName":"John","lastName":"Smith"},{"empId":0,"firstName":"Sachin","lastName":"Kumar"}]}
</code></pre>