How to receive JSON Messages in POST body in a JAX-RS Restful web service in CXF? - json

Question

I'm trying to develop a REST service using Apache-CXF, on top of JAX-RS. For starters, I have a method called test that receives a String message and int value. I want the clients to be able to pass these parameters in a POST message body. I can't seem to achieve this.
Before I paste the code here, here are some details:
I'm using CXF without Spring
It's not a web app, so I don't have the WEB-INF folder with the web.xml
I test the service using SoapUI and Postman (Google Chrome application)
With the following code, I get WARNING: javax.ws.rs.BadRequestException: HTTP 400 Bad Request:
DemoService.java
#WebService(targetNamespace = "http://demoservice.com")
#Path("/demoService")
public interface DemoService {
#POST
#Path("/test")
#Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
#Consumes(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
public String test (String message, int value);
}
DemoServiceImpl.java
public class DemoServiceImpl implements DemoService {
#Override
public String test(String message, int value) {
return "test message: " + message + " value = : " + value;
}
}
DemoServer.java
public class DemoServer{
public static void main(String[] args) {
JAXRSServerFactoryBean serverFactory = new JAXRSServerFactoryBean();
DemoService demoService = new DemoServiceImpl();
serverFactory.setServiceBean(demoService);
serverFactory.setAddress("http://localhost:9090");
serverFactory.create();
}
}
My POM.xml (minus the attributes in the root tag, everything's there)
<project ...>
<modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
<groupId>demo</groupId>
<artifactId>demoService</artifactId>
<version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
<properties>
<cxf.version>3.0.0</cxf.version>
</properties>
<dependencies>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
<artifactId>cxf-rt-frontend-jaxws</artifactId>
<version>${cxf.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
<artifactId>cxf-rt-frontend-jaxrs</artifactId>
<version>${cxf.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
<artifactId>cxf-rt-transports-http</artifactId>
<version>${cxf.version}</version>
</dependency>
<!-- Jetty is needed if you're are not using the CXFServlet -->
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
<artifactId>cxf-rt-transports-http-jetty</artifactId>
<version>${cxf.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
<artifactId>cxf-rt-rs-service-description</artifactId>
<version>3.0.0-milestone1</version>
</dependency>
</dependencies>
</project>
Testing with {"message":"hello there!", "value":"50"} to the URL http://localhost:9090/demoService/test gave a HTTP 400 Bad Reuest.
Then I saw this question on S.O.: How to access parameters in a RESTful POST method and tried this:
added the following nested class in DemoServer.java:
#XmlRootElement
public static class TestRequest {
private String message;
private int value;
public String getMessage() { return message; }
public void setMessage(String message) { this.message = message; }
public int getValue() { return value; }
public void setValue(int value) { this.value = value; }
}
I also modified the DemoService interface and the implementation to use this class as a parameter in the test method, although this is still ultimately not what I want to do. (just showing the implementation here, question's already getting long):
#Override
public String test(TestRequest testRequest) {
String message = testRequest.getMessage();
int value = testRequest.getValue();
return "test message: " + message + " value = : " + value;
}
And to fix this error that I got: SEVERE: No message body reader has been found for class DemoService$TestRequest, ContentType: application/json (in Postman I see error 415 - unsupported media type) I added the following dependencies (jettison and another thing) to the POM.xml:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.codehaus.jettison</groupId>
<artifactId>jettison</artifactId>
<version>1.3.5</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.cxf</groupId>
<artifactId>cxf-rt-rs-extension-providers</artifactId>
<version>2.6.0</version>
</dependency>
I tested the service using the following JSON message, in a HTTP POST request:
{"testRequest":{"message":"hello there!", "value":"50"}}
This works. Though this solution where I use a TestRequest class to encapsulate the parameters works, that's not the solution I'm looking for. I want to be able to pass the two parameters in a JSON message, without having to introduce this TestRequest class (explicitly).
Questions:
Would this be easier to implement using Jersey?
I don't have a web.xml nor a WEB-INF folder, so I can't configure CXF in a cxf.xml file can I? A lot of tutorials online seem ot use a lot of XML configuration, but I don't want to deploy a framework like TomEE or Spring or Glassfish just to do that.
Searching online for solutions, I came across Spring Boot. Would you recommend using that, perhaps? Would that make developing web services like this easier?
Also, how do I get it to return the value in JSON format (or is it not supposed to do that for Strings?)

Answer 1

My friend pointed me to this stack exchange question: JAX-RS Post multiple objects
and also the following documentation: http://cxf.apache.org/docs/jax-rs-and-jax-ws.html
which states:
public class CustomerService {
public void doIt(String a, String b) {...};
}
By default JAX-RS may not be able to handle such methods as it
requires that only a single parameter can be available in a signature
that is not annotated by one of the JAX-RS annotations like
#PathParam. So if a 'String a' parameter can be mapped to a #Path
template variable or one of the query segments then this signature
won't need to be changed :
#Path("/customers/{a}")
public class CustomerService {
public void doIt(#PathParam("a") String a, String b) {...};
}
So, to answer my question, NO, it cannot be done.