How to write Jersey Multipart webapp, Tomcat Server

Question

I've been doing a lot of REST tutorials and enjoying them. Recently, I tried writing a jersey multipart webapp with Netbeans but I can't seem to because it seems something's missing my jersey library.

I downloaded the jersey-multipart.jar file, but still that didn't help:

@Path("/file")
public class UploadFileService {

    @POST
    @Path("/upload")
    @Consumes(MediaType.MULTIPART_FORM_DATA)
    public Response uploadFile(
        @FormDataParam("file") InputStream uploadedInputStream,
        @FormDataParam("file") FormDataContentDisposition fileDetail) {

This code is from blog. I'm trying to put it in my webapp, but the @FormDataParam tag and the FormDataContentDisposition class are not recognised. I downloaded the jersey-multipart.jar and that seemed to solve the @FormDataParam tag problem, but not the FormDataContentDisposition class.

I'm using Tomcat 7.0.

How do I go about successfully creating a jersey multipart webapp without any problems? And how come the jersey-multipart jar file isn't included in the jersey library in Netbeans?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Lutz Horn has a point, but for the sake of those using Netbeans 7.4 (Java EE 6) and are still struggling with this issue, here's a step by step on how to create your very own multipart rest web service and deploying on Tomcat, with Netbeans. (Note, deploying on Glassfish requires a slightly different configuration which isn't covered in this answer).

First off, my suggestion is to create a maven web application and not a normal web application. Reason is, the JAX-RS and Jersey libraries that come with Java EE 6 are not sufficient enough, and once you start fiddling around with external jars, things tend to get messy, especially with Jersey. (Hopefully, this has been corrected in Netbeans 8.0 (Java EE 7)).

(1) Create a maven web-app, choose Java EE 6 and Tomcat 7. Once you're done, you'll notice you don't have a web.xml. Most multipart tutorials will tell you to include certain configurations in your web.xml file. Don't bother with that. You don't need a web.xml file.

(2) Create a RESTfull web service by either writing it manually or using the wizard (right click on your maven web-app -- New -- Other -- Web Services -- [choose the RESTful web service you want])

(3) Open your pom.xml (you can find it under the Project Files folder in your maven web-app) and add these dependencies:

        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.glassfish.jersey.containers</groupId>
            <artifactId>jersey-container-servlet</artifactId>
            <version>2.7</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.glassfish.jersey.media</groupId>
            <artifactId>jersey-media-multipart</artifactId>
            <version>2.7</version>
        </dependency>

If you're doing this for the first time, you need an active internet connection, as maven will download the dependencies from its central repository.

(4) Go to your ApplicationConfig class or whatever class that holds that contains your @ApplicationPath(). It should look like this:

@javax.ws.rs.ApplicationPath("webresources")
public class ApplicationConfig extends Application {
    @Override
    public Set<Class<?>> getClasses() {
        Set<Class<?>> resources = new java.util.HashSet<Class<?>>();
        resources.add(MultiPartFeature.class);
        addRestResourceClasses(resources);
        return resources;
    }

    /**
     * Do not modify addRestResourceClasses() method.
     * It is automatically populated with
     * all resources defined in the project.
     * If required, comment out calling this method in getClasses().
     */
    private void addRestResourceClasses(Set<Class<?>> resources) {
        resources.add(com.mycompany.mavenrestuploader.UploaderResource.class);
    }

Note: resources.add(MultiPartFeature.class); That has to be included, otherwise Jersey multipart won't work.

The reason I put that line of code in the getClasses method and not the addRestResourceClasses method is because the addRestResourceClasses method gets modified whenever there's a change to your resource class, and if you include the MultiPartFeature code in there, it will get erased.

Once you've done all these things, you are good to go.

If you're just looking to create a RESTful web service without multipart, follow steps 1 to 3, but in step 3 do not include the jersey-media-multipart dependency.

I hope this helps you ;)