Spring 3 style type conversion through a ConversionService instance in addition to the JavaBeans PropertyEditors used for Data Binding.
Support for formatting Number fields using the @NumberFormat annotation through the ConversionService.
Support for formatting Date, Calendar, Long, and Joda Time fields using the @DateTimeFormat annotation.
Support for validating @Controller inputs with @Valid, if a JSR-303 Provider is present on the classpath.
HttpMessageConverter support for @RequestBody method parameters and @ResponseBody method return values from @RequestMapping or @ExceptionHandler methods.
This is the complete list of HttpMessageConverters set up by mvc:annotation-driven:
ByteArrayHttpMessageConverter converts byte arrays.
StringHttpMessageConverter converts strings.
ResourceHttpMessageConverter converts to/from org.springframework.core.io.Resource for all media types.
SourceHttpMessageConverter converts to/from a javax.xml.transform.Source.
FormHttpMessageConverter converts form data to/from a MultiValueMap<String, String>.
Jaxb2RootElementHttpMessageConverter converts Java objects to/from XML — added if JAXB2 is present on the classpath.
MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter (or MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter) converts to/from JSON — added if Jackson 2 (or Jackson) is present on the classpath.
AtomFeedHttpMessageConverter converts Atom feeds — added if Rome is present on the classpath.
RssChannelHttpMessageConverter converts RSS feeds — added if Rome is present on the classpath.