Posting JSON to REST API

Question

I'm creating a REST API that will accept JSON requests.

I'm testing it out using CURL:

curl -i -POST -H 'Accept: application/json' -d '{"id":1,"pan":11111}' http://localhost:8080/PurchaseAPIServer/api/purchase

But getting the following error:

HTTP/1.1 415 Unsupported Media Type
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 1051
Date: Wed, 25 Apr 2012 21:36:14 GMT

The server refused this request because the request entity is in a format not supported by the requested resource for the requested method ().

When debugging it never even gets into my create action in the controller.

import java.util.List;

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.http.HttpStatus;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PathVariable;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestBody;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ResponseBody;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ResponseStatus;

import com.app.model.Purchase;
import com.app.service.IPurchaseService;

@Controller
public class PurchaseController {

    @Autowired
    private IPurchaseService purchaseService;

    @RequestMapping(value = "purchase", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    @ResponseBody
    public final List<Purchase> getAll() {
        return purchaseService.getAll();
    }

    @RequestMapping(value = "purchase", method = RequestMethod.POST)
    @ResponseStatus( HttpStatus.CREATED )
    public void create(@RequestBody final Purchase entity) {
        purchaseService.addPurchase(entity);
    }
}

UPDATE

I added Jackson config to AppConfig.java:

@Configuration
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "com.app")
public class AppConfig {

    @Bean
    public AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter annotationMethodHandlerAdapter()
    {
        final AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter annotationMethodHandlerAdapter = new AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter();
        final MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter mappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter = new MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter();

        HttpMessageConverter<?>[] httpMessageConverter = { mappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter };

        String[] supportedHttpMethods = { "POST", "GET", "HEAD" };

        annotationMethodHandlerAdapter.setMessageConverters(httpMessageConverter);
        annotationMethodHandlerAdapter.setSupportedMethods(supportedHttpMethods);

        return annotationMethodHandlerAdapter;
    }
}

My GETs are working correctly now:

curl -i -H "Content-Type:application/json" -H "Accept:application/json" http://localhost:8080/PurchaseAPIServer/api/purchase

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
Content-Type: application/json
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:19:55 GMT

[{"id":1,"pan":111}]

But I get the following when attempting a POST:

curl -i -X POST -H "Content-Type:application/json" -H "Accept:application/json" http://localhost:8080/PurchaseAPIServer/api/purchaseMe -d "{"id":2,"pan":122}"

HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 971
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:29:56 GMT
Connection: close

The request sent by the client was syntactically incorrect ().

My Model:

@Entity
@XmlRootElement
public class Purchase implements Serializable {

    /**
     * 
     */
    private static final long serialVersionUID = 6603477834338392140L;

    @Id
    @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)
    private Long id;

    private Long pan;

    public Long getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public void setId(Long id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

    public Long getPan() {
        return pan;
    }

    public void setPan(Long pan) {
        this.pan = pan;
    }

}

Any ideas where I'm going wrong?

Thanks

Answer 1

As sdouglass suggested, Spring MVC automatically detects Jackson and sets up a MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter to handle conversion to/from JSON. But I did need explicity configure the converter to get it to work as he also pointed out.

I added the following and my CURL GET requests were working..Hooray.

AppConfig.java

@Configuration
@ComponentScan(basePackages = "com.app")
public class AppConfig {

    @Bean
    public AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter annotationMethodHandlerAdapter()
    {
        final AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter annotationMethodHandlerAdapter = new AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter();
        final MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter mappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter = new MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter();

        HttpMessageConverter<?>[] httpMessageConverter = { mappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter };

        String[] supportedHttpMethods = { "POST", "GET", "HEAD" };

        annotationMethodHandlerAdapter.setMessageConverters(httpMessageConverter);
        annotationMethodHandlerAdapter.setSupportedMethods(supportedHttpMethods);

        return annotationMethodHandlerAdapter;
    }
}

curl -i -H "Content-Type:application/json" -H "Accept:application/json" http://localhost:8080/PurchaseAPIServer/api/purchase

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
Content-Type: application/json
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:19:55 GMT

[{"id":1,"pan":111}]

But the following CURL POST was still not working (Never hitting the controller action and giving no console debug info.

curl -i -X POST -H "Content-Type:application/json"  http://localhost:8080/PurchaseAPIServer/api/purchaseMe -d "{"id":2,"pan":122}"

HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 971
Date: Thu, 26 Apr 2012 21:29:56 GMT
Connection: close

The request sent by the client was syntactically incorrect ().

So I added Logback to get some detailed debugging started.

<configuration>

    <appender name="STDOUT" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
        <encoder>
            <pattern>%d{HH:mm:ss.SSS} [%thread] %-5level %logger{36} - %msg%n
            </pattern>
        </encoder>
    </appender>

    <appender name="FILE" class="ch.qos.logback.core.FileAppender">
        <file>/home/thomas/springApps/purchaseapi.log</file>
        <encoder>
            <pattern>%date %level [%thread] %logger{10} [%file:%line] %msg%n
            </pattern>
        </encoder>
    </appender>

    <logger name="org.hibernate" level="DEBUG" />

    <logger name="org.springframework" level="TRACE" />
    <logger name="org.springframework.transaction" level="INFO" />
    <logger name="org.springframework.security" level="INFO" /> <!-- to debug security related issues (DEBUG) -->
    <logger name="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc" level="TRACE" /> <!-- some serialization issues are at trace level here: org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.method.annotation.ServletInvocableHandlerMethod -->

    <!-- our service -->
    <logger name="com.app" level="DEBUG" />
    <!-- <logger name="com.app" level="INFO" /> --><!-- to follow if setup is being executed -->

    <root level="INFO">
        <appender-ref ref="FILE" />
    </root>

</configuration>

Adding TRACE level debugging to org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc gave me the answer to the problem.

2012-04-28 14:17:44,579 DEBUG [http-bio-8080-exec-3] o.s.w.s.m.m.a.RequestResponseBodyMethodProcessor [AbstractMessageConverterMethodArgumentResolver.java:117] Reading [com.app.model.Purchase] as "application/json" using [org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter@74a14fed]
2012-04-28 14:17:44,604 TRACE [http-bio-8080-exec-3] o.s.w.s.m.m.a.ServletInvocableHandlerMethod [InvocableHandlerMethod.java:159] Error resolving argument [0] [type=com.app.model.Purchase]
HandlerMethod details: 
Controller [com.app.controller.PurchaseController]
Method [public void com.app.controller.PurchaseController.create(com.app.model.Purchase)]

org.springframework.http.converter.HttpMessageNotReadableException: Could not read JSON: Unexpected character ('p' (code 112)): was expecting double-quote to start field name

I changed my CURL POSTs to the following an it all worked:

curl -i -X POST -H "Content-Type:application/json" http://localhost:8080/PurchaseAPIServer/api/purchase -d '{"pan":11111}'
HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Server: Apache-Coyote/1.1
Content-Length: 0
Date: Sat, 28 Apr 2012 13:19:40 GMT

Hopefully someone finds this useful.