Advantages of Server-Side Page Rendering

Most of the web apps I've written for my firm works this way -- a single page, javascript driven application making ajax calls to a back-end service.

So when I started my own website, my first implementation was done the same way. However, more than halfway through the development, I realized I made a big mistake.

My website offers content to my users, and this content needs to be available via search engines. I also need to monetize my website via ads. The problem is that both these requirements depend on the static content avaiable from the website.

Static content is required to index keywords for search and to display relevant ads. These keywords are fetched from the text found in the underlying HTML. If your content is fetched from a remote source and displayed via javascript, it's likely that your underlying HTML would be mostly blank.

Because they provide a rich client experience, dynamic pages are ideal for web-based applications. However, if you intend to deliver content, it's best to avoid dynamic pages.

Here is one of my favorite kick-off examples of structure for your spring rest app.

1. Separation of layers, each layer is an individual module/project

• REST API
  • Packaged as war (Could be jar if you are using spring boot with embedded server. Spring boot doc clearly explains how to deploy the so-call uber jar. It is deadly simple.)
  • It has rest controllers that handle request/responses
  • depends on Service Module below
• Service
  • Packaged as jar
  • Business logic abstractions, this layer has no idea how to communicate with datasource.
  • It will be autowired in rest controllers
  • Depends on DAO/Repository module below
• DAO/Repository
  • Packaged as jar
  • Talks to data source directly, has operations commonly known as CRUD. It could be simple jdbc, JPA, or even file access.
  • Depends on domain module below
• Domain
  • Packaged as jar
  • It has your domain models, normally POJO classes. If you are using ORM, they are ORM entities.
  • It could also have DTO (Data Transfer Object), which are still under hot debates. Use it or not is your call.
• You can add more modules such as utility, third party integration, etc.. but the above are highly recommended to have.

2. Build/Dependency Management Tools (Very necessary IMHO)

There are plenty of them, google search will show you. I personally like Maven with Spring. It simply works for the above project structure.
Also note that if you are using maven, there is a parent module that aggregates all the modules discussed in section 1. All the bullet point modules also corresponds to maven modules.

3. Thoughts on your particular project

Since you are using REST, I would highly recommend that you NOT use JSP as your view. You can use plain HTML5 + Javascript or some popular framework like AngularJS as your view.
If you insist on using JSP, you will need introduce another war(web app) that has controllers and JSPs. Controller will get the data(Normally Json/xml format) and then parse them to your models(POJO) so that your JSP can get them from your controller and do the display. Posting data from JSP is the reverse, I omitted here.

It is nowhere near a complete guide since this topic is quite huge and depends heavily on your specific requirement but the terms included here is enough for you to do additional research(Google, it is). Hopefully this will give you some ideas on how to approach.