AngularJs how to access Model Attribute value from Spring MVC controller

I'm just starting with Angular with Spring so what I'll do is explain how I did it and you can see if it's a viable option for you.

For one, I didn't try to go through the ModelAndView for my data. I let my "regular" controller return the view but got my data via the angular controller and service along with a @RestController on the Spring side (that's two separate Spring controllers then).

To return only the view you have at least two options that I'm aware of. One, you can just return a ModelAndView without a model like so:

public ModelAndView yourView() {
    return new ModelAndView("yourView");
}

Or two, return the name of the view as a string like so:

public String yourView() {
    return "yourView";
}

In both cases you'd obviously need the correct @RequestMapping.

In my view I had an angular controller function that made a call to my associated angular service which in turn called my @RestController and so on. I initiated the data like so:

ng-controller="MyController as ctrl" ng-init="ctrl.allThings()"

Examples of the code:

Angular controller:

self.allThings = function () {
        ThingService.things()
            .then(
                function (data) {
                    self.things = data;
                },
                function (errResponse) {
                    console.error("Error retrieving thing list");
                }
            );
    };

Angular service:

    things: function() {
        return $http.get('/things')
            .then(
                function(response) {
                    return response.data;
                },
                function (errResponse) {
                    return $q.reject(errResponse);
                }
            );
    },

Spring REST controller:

@RequestMapping(value = "/things", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public List<Thing> things() {
    return thingService.findAll();
}

I imagine you know the remaining code for the Spring side. Jackson will handle all the object conversions for you.