Sending GET request with Authentication headers using restTemplate

Question

I need to retrieve resources from my server by sending a GET request with some Authorization headers using RestTemplate.

After going over the docs I noticed that none of the GET methods accepts headers as a parameter, and the only way to send Headers such as accept and Authorization is by using the exchange method.

Since it is a very basic action I am wondering if I am missing something and there another, easier way to do it?

Answer 1

You're not missing anything. RestTemplate#exchange(..) is the appropriate method to use to set request headers.

Here's an example (with POST, but just change that to GET and use the entity you want).

Here's another example.

Note that with a GET, your request entity doesn't have to contain anything (unless your API expects it, but that would go against the HTTP spec). It can be an empty String.

Answer 2

You can use postForObject with an HttpEntity. It would look like this:

HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders(); headers.setContentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON); headers.set("Authorization", "Bearer "+accessToken);  HttpEntity<String> entity = new HttpEntity<String>(requestJson,headers); String result = restTemplate.postForObject(url, entity, String.class); 

In a GET request, you'd usually not send a body (it's allowed, but it doesn't serve any purpose). The way to add headers without wiring the RestTemplate differently is to use the exchange or execute methods directly. The get shorthands don't support header modification.

The asymmetry is a bit weird on a first glance, perhaps this is going to be fixed in future versions of Spring.