Converting @RequestBody to an object

Question

Guys, Well I have done enough research still I can't find the solution to this.

In a nutshell, I'm simply passing url encoded form data to the Controller method and trying to convert it as a domain object which has Date and integers.

@RequestMapping(value = "/savePassport", method = RequestMethod.POST)
    public @ResponseBody
    AjaxResponse savePassport(@RequestBody StaffPassport passport, HttpServletResponse response) {

    // Some operations.

}

The Staff Passport looks like this:

import java.sql.Date;

public class StaffPassport {

    private int staffId;
    private String passportNumber;
    private String placeOfIssue;
    private Date issueDate;
    private Date expiryDate;
    private String spouseName;
    private String oldPassportRef;
    private String visaInfo;
    private String description;
//gets/sets
}

When I invoke the /savePassport, I get unsupported media exception. I guess it's related to casting.

I can't this working right. Of course I can catch individual form data using @RequestParam and manually do the casting but that's not the point of a framework isn't it?

Where am I going wrong? And you are right. I'm a beginner in Spring, but I love it.

Answer 1

Looks like you're using the wrong annotation. @RequestBody is for taking a request that has arbitrary content in its body,such as JSON, some application defined XML, comma separated variables.. whatever. And using a marshaller that you configure in the dispatcher servlet to turn it into objects.

If all you want to do is ask Spring to bind a plain old form post onto the backing object for you, the correct annotation to put on the method parameter is @ModelAttribute.

Answer 2

If you are posting a JSON Object with jQuery and you want Spring to be able to process it with @RequestBody, use JSON.stringify(....) in your data. Here an example:

var data = { "id": 3, "name": "test" }
$.post("processJsonData.html",JSON.stringify(data), function(data){
    ...
  }
);

If you don't use the JSON.stringify() then you will submit the data as form data and Spring will tell you that you have an unsupported media type.