POST request via RestTemplate in JSON

Question

This technique worked for me:

HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
headers.setContentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON);

HttpEntity<String> entity = new HttpEntity<String>(requestJson, headers);
ResponseEntity<String> response = restTemplate.put(url, entity);

I hope this helps

I ran across this problem when attempting to debug a REST endpoint. Here is a basic example using Spring's RestTemplate class to make a POST request that I used. It took me quite a bit of a long time to piece together code from different places to get a working version.

RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate();

String url = "endpoint url";
String requestJson = "{\"queriedQuestion\":\"Is there pain in your hand?\"}";
HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
headers.setContentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON);

HttpEntity<String> entity = new HttpEntity<String>(requestJson,headers);
String answer = restTemplate.postForObject(url, entity, String.class);
System.out.println(answer);

The particular JSON parser my rest endpoint was using needed double quotes around field names so that's why I've escaped the double quotes in my requestJson String.

I've been using rest template with JSONObjects as follow:

// create request body
JSONObject request = new JSONObject();
request.put("username", name);
request.put("password", password);

// set headers
HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
headers.setContentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON);
HttpEntity<String> entity = new HttpEntity<String>(request.toString(), headers);

// send request and parse result
ResponseEntity<String> loginResponse = restTemplate
  .exchange(urlString, HttpMethod.POST, entity, String.class);
if (loginResponse.getStatusCode() == HttpStatus.OK) {
  JSONObject userJson = new JSONObject(loginResponse.getBody());
} else if (loginResponse.getStatusCode() == HttpStatus.UNAUTHORIZED) {
  // nono... bad credentials
}

As specified here I guess you need to add a messageConverter for MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter

I'm doing in this way and it works .

HttpHeaders headers = createHttpHeaders(map);
public HttpHeaders createHttpHeaders(Map<String, String> map)
{   
    HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
    headers.setContentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON);
    for (Entry<String, String> entry : map.entrySet()) {
        headers.add(entry.getKey(),entry.getValue());
    }
    return headers;
}

// Pass headers here

 String requestJson = "{ // Construct your JSON here }";
logger.info("Request JSON ="+requestJson);
HttpEntity<String> entity = new HttpEntity<String>(requestJson, headers);
ResponseEntity<String> response = restTemplate.exchange(url, HttpMethod.POST, entity, String.class);
logger.info("Result - status ("+ response.getStatusCode() + ") has body: " + response.hasBody());
logger.info("Response ="+response.getBody());

Hope this helps

If you are using Spring 3.0, an easy way to avoid the org.springframework.web.client.HttpClientErrorException: 415 Unsupported Media Type exception, is to include the jackson jar files in your classpath, and use mvc:annotation-driven config element. As specified here.

I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out why the mvc-ajax app worked without any special config for the MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter. If you read the article I linked above closely:

Underneath the covers, Spring MVC delegates to a HttpMessageConverter to perform the serialization. In this case, Spring MVC invokes a MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter built on the Jackson JSON processor. This implementation is enabled automatically when you use the mvc:annotation-driven configuration element with Jackson present in your classpath.

The "415 Unsupported Media Type" error is telling you that the server will not accept your POST request. Your request is absolutely fine, it's the server that's mis-configured.

MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter will automatically set the request content-type header to application/json, and my guess is that your server is rejecting that. You haven't told us anything about your server setup, though, so I can't really advise you on that.