title: JSON response from Spring REST has backslash characters
body: <p>I have my Spring REST service written like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>@RequestMapping(value = "/{name}", method = RequestMethod.GET,
          consumes = MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE, produces = MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE)
  public ResponseEntity&lt;Map&lt;String, Object&gt;&gt; 
              getStudentByName(@PathVariable("name") String name)  {
      Map&lt;String, Object&gt; map = null;
      try {
          map = new HashMap&lt;String, Object&gt;();
          map.put("name", "Tom Joe);
          map.put("id", "t100");
          map.put("dept", "nuclear energy");          
      } catch (Exception e) {
          LOG.error("Error finding with name " + name, e);
      }
  
      return new ResponseEntity&lt;Map&lt;String, Object&gt;&gt;(map, HttpStatus.OK);
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I get the output like this on the client side which is basically a single string:</p>
  
  <pre><code>"{\"name\":\"Tom Joe\",\"id\":\"100\",\"dept\":\"nuclear energy\"}"
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But my desired output is:</p>
  
  <pre><code>{
  "name":"Tom Joe",
  "id":"t100",
  "dept":"nuclear energy"
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Can anyone tell me how to avoid sending backslashes and instead send proper json ? Can I not do that for returning a map ?</p>