Spring Controller testing with MockMvc post method

Question

I am trying to test a method of my controller in a Spring Boot application. This is a post endpoint, which gets an id in a request and it passes on this id to a service:

@Slf4j
@Controller
public class AdministrationController {

    private final AdministrationService administrationService;

    @Autowired
    public AdministrationController(AdministrationService administrationService) {
        this.administrationService = administrationService;
    }

    @PostMapping("/administration")
    public @ResponseBody ResponseEntity<String> deleteByMessageId(String id) {
        return new ResponseEntity<>(administrationService.deleteMessageById(id), HttpStatus.OK);
    }
}

The test for this method of the controller:

RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
@WebMvcTest(AdministrationController.class)
public class AdministrationControllerTest {

    @Autowired
    private MockMvc mvc;

    @MockBean
    private AdministrationService service;

    @Test
    public void 
    deleteByMessageId_whenCalled_thenServiceMethodIsCalledWithRequestParameters() throws Exception {

        Object randomObj = new Object() {
            public final String id = "1234";
        };

        ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();
        String json = objectMapper.writeValueAsString(randomObj);


        MvcResult result = mvc.perform(
            post("/administration")
                    .contentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
                    .content(json))
            .andExpect(status().isOk())
            .andReturn();

        verify(service, times(1)).deleteMessageById("1234");
}

}

When I run this test, the post request is executed, but with an empty body:

MockHttpServletRequest:
  HTTP Method = POST
  Request URI = /administration
   Parameters = {}
      Headers = {Content-Type=[application/json]}
         Body = <no character encoding set>
Session Attrs = {}

It seems, even though I set the content in my test, it does not appear in the request I am sending. And, indeed, the test fails:

Argument(s) are different! Wanted: "1234"
Actual invocation has different arguments: null

What am I missing here? How can I set the request body with MockMvc?

Answer 1

Try to use .characterEncoding("utf-8")) :

MvcResult result = mvc.perform(post("/administration")
    .contentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
    .content(json)
    .characterEncoding("utf-8"))
    .andExpect(status().isOk())
    .andReturn();

Answer 2

Another option (that is inspired by @stelios-anastasakis answer) is to provide character encoding within the Content-Type header:

MvcResult result = mvc.perform(post("/administration")
    .contentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_UTF8_VALUE)
    .content(json)
    .andExpect(status().isOk())
    .andReturn();

Note that we use MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_UTF8_VALUE instead of MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON here.