title: Can Spring MVC's REST framework accept query strings rather than PathVariables?
body: <p>In all the tutorials and articles I have read regarding Spring 3's RESTful additions to Spring MVC, I have only ever seen one way for the use to pass in query data, via a <code>@PathVariable</code>, <a href="http://www.mkyong.com/spring-mvc/spring-3-mvc-and-json-example/">like so</a>:</p>
  
  <pre><code>@RequestMapping(value="/shops/{name}", method=RequestMethod.GET)
  public @ResponseBody Shop getShopInJSON(@PathVariable String name) {
      ...
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>which would respond to something like <code>http://www.example.com/myservlet/shops/{name}</code>, which could evaluate to <code>http://www.example.com/myservlet/shops/thebestshoparound</code>.</p>
  
  <p>My question is this: Is it possible to set up a RESTful interface that takes requests based on classic query strings, e.g. <code>http://www.example.com/myservlet/shops?name=thebestshoparound</code>, instead of <code>PathVariables</code>?</p>
  
  <p>This seems like a really simple question, but I can't find it anywhere online.</p>