MockMvc no longer handles UTF-8 characters with Spring Boot 2.2.0.RELEASE

Question

After I upgraded to the newly released 2.2.0.RELEASE version of Spring Boot some of my tests failed. It appears that the MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_UTF8 has been deprecated and is no longer returned as default content type from controller methods that do not specify the content type explicitly.

Test code like

String content = mockMvc.perform(get("/some-api")             .contentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON))             .andExpect(status().isOk())             .andExpect(content().contentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_UTF8))             .andReturn()             .getResponse()             .getContentAsString(); 

suddenly did not work anymore as the content type was mismatched as shown below

java.lang.AssertionError: Content type  Expected :application/json;charset=UTF-8 Actual   :application/json 

Changing the code to .andExpect(content().contentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)) resolved the issue for now.

But now when comparing content to the expected serialized object there is still a mismatch if there are any special characters in the object. It appears that the .getContentAsString() method does not make use of the UTF-8 character encoding by default (any more).

java.lang.AssertionError: Response content expected:<[{"description":"Er hörte leise Schritte hinter sich."}]> but was:<[{"description":"Er hörte leise Schritte hinter sich."}]> Expected :[{"description":"Er hörte leise Schritte hinter sich."}] Actual   :[{"description":"Er hörte leise Schritte hinter sich."}] 

How can I get content in UTF-8 encoding?

Answer 1

Yes. This is problem from 2.2.0 spring-boot. They set deprecation for default charset encoding.

.getContentAsString(StandardCharsets.UTF_8) - good but in any response would be populated ISO 8859-1 by default.

In my project I updated current created converter:

@Configuration public class SpringConfig implements WebMvcConfigurer {      @Override     public void configureMessageConverters(List<HttpMessageConverter<?>> converters) {         converters.stream()             .filter(converter -> converter instanceof MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter)             .findFirst()             .ifPresent(converter -> ((MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter) converter).setDefaultCharset(UTF_8));     } ... 

Answer 2

Using .getContentAsString(StandardCharsets.UTF_8) instead of .getContentAsString() resolves the problem.