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How should I handle a Java POST that can have a RequestBody of multiple types?

So I have a Spring RestController and one of my endpoints is used to perform operations on a generic typed object passed into my RequestBody as so:
#PostMapping("/endpoint")
public <T extends Comparable<T>> ResponseEntity<Integer> balancingPost(#RequestBody MyCustomObject<T> mco)
So after a lot of searching it doesn't seem this can be done without explicitly stating the type at some point. However as it stands my controller has no way of knowing the type (the program calling the POST does though). So how should I handle this? Is there a way to post my Class of T as well and somehow map it?

Try following
public ResponseEntity<?> balancingPost(#RequestBody MyCustomObject<T> mco) {
ResponseEntity<?> response = null;
try {
/*Some condition*/
if (!auth.equals(authCode)) {
response = new ResponseEntity<>("Unauthorized", HttpStatus.UNAUTHORIZED);
} else {
MyModel model = service.getModel();
response = new ResponseEntity<>(model, HttpStatus.OK);
}
} catch (Exception ex) {
response = new ResponseEntity<>(ex.getMessage(), HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR);
ex.printStackTrace();
}
return response;
}

How to parse a URL and run a method with Spring MVC 'reflectively'?

I have a Spring Boot application that uses Spring MVC in the usual manner, with a bunch of #RequestMapping methods, Freemarker definitions, and the like. This is all tied together with a WebMvcConfigurerAdapter class.
I'd like to provide a service where the user submits a list of valid URLs, and the webapp would work out which controller would be called, passes in the parameters, and returns a combined result for every URL — all in one request.
This would save the user from having to make hundreds of HTTP calls, but would still allow them to make one-off requests if need be. Ideally, I'd just inject an auto-configured Spring bean, so I don't have to repeat the URL resolving and adapting and handling that Spring does internally, and the controller's list of other controllers would never go out of sync with the real list of controllers.
I expected to write something like this (simplified to only deal with one URL, which is pointless but easier to understand):
#Autowired BeanThatSolvesAllMyProblems allMappings;
#PostMapping(path = "/encode", consumes = MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN_VALUE)
#ResponseBody
public String encode(#RequestBody String inputPath) {
if (allMappings.hasMappingForPath(inputPath)) {
return allMappings.getMapping(inputPath).execute();
} else {
return "URL didn't match, sorry";
}
}
Instead, I've had to define Spring beans I don't know what they do and have been repeating some of what Spring is meant to do for me, which I'm worried won't work quite the same as it would if the user just made the call themselves:
// these two are #Beans, with just their default constructor called.
#Autowired RequestMappingHandlerMapping handlers;
#Autowired RequestMappingHandlerAdapter adapter;
#PostMapping(path = "/encode", consumes = MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN_VALUE)
#ResponseBody
public String encode(#RequestBody String inputText) {
final HttpServletRequest mockRequest = new MockHttpServletRequest(null, inputText);
final StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
this.handlers.getHandlerMethods().forEach((requestMappingInfo, handlerMethod) -> {
if (requestMappingInfo.getPatternsCondition().getMatchingCondition(mockRequest) != null) {
try {
final MockHttpServletResponse mockResponse = new MockHttpServletResponse();
result.append("Result: ").append(adapter.handle(mockRequest, mockResponse, handlerMethod));
result.append(", ").append(mockResponse.getContentAsString());
result.append("\n");
} catch (Exception e) {
logger.error(e.getMessage(), e);
}
}
});
return result.toString();
}
I thought I was doing quite well going down this path, but it's failing with Missing URI template variable errors, and not only do I have no idea how to put the request parameters in (another thing which Spring could be able to handle itself), but I'm not even sure that this is the right way to go about doing this. So how do I simulate a Spring MVC request "reflectively", from within the webapp itself?

JSON API spec. solves this problem by allowing sending multiple operations per request. There even exists a quite mature implementation that supports this feature which is called Elide. But I guess this is might not fully meet your requirements.
Anyway, here's what you can do.
You have to take into consideration that DispatcherServlet holds handlerMappings list that is used to detect appropriate request handler and handlerAdaptors. The selection strategy for both lists is configurable (see DispatcherServlet#initHandlerMappings and #initHandlerAdapters).
You should work out a way you would prefer to retrieve this lists of handlerMappings/initHandlerAdapters and stay in sync with DispatcherServlet.
After that you can implement your own HandlerMapping/HandlerAdaptor (or present a Controller method as in your example) that would handle the request to /encode path.
Btw, HandlerMapping as javadoc says is
Interface to be implemented by objects that define a mapping between
requests and handler objects
or simply saying if we take DefaultAnnotationHandlerMapping that would map our HttpServletRequests to #Controller methods annotated with #RequestMapping. Having this mapping HandlerAdapter prepares incoming request to consuming controller method, f.ex. extracting request params, body and using them to call controller's method.
Having this, you can extract URLs from main request, create a list of stub HttpRequests holding the information needed for further processing and loop through them calling this:
HandlerExecutionChain getHandler(HttpServletRequest request) throws Exception {
for (HandlerMapping hm : this.handlerMappings) {
if (logger.isTraceEnabled()) {
logger.trace(
"Testing handler map [" + hm + "] in DispatcherServlet with name '" + getServletName() + "'");
}
HandlerExecutionChain handler = hm.getHandler(request);
if (handler != null) {
return handler;
}
}
return null;
}
having a handlerMapping you call
HandlerAdapter getHandlerAdapter(Object handler) throws ServletException {
for (HandlerAdapter ha : this.handlerAdapters) {
if (logger.isTraceEnabled()) {
logger.trace("Testing handler adapter [" + ha + "]");
}
if (ha.supports(handler)) {
return ha;
}
}
and then you can finally call
ha.handle(processedRequest, response, mappedHandler.getHandler());
which in turn would execute the controller's method with params.
But having all this, I would not recommend to following this approach, instead, think about usage of JSON API spec or any other.

How about using Springs RestTemplate as client for this? You could call your controllers within the spring controller as if it would be an external resource:
#ResponseBody
public List<String> encode(#RequestBody List inputPaths) {
List<String> response = new ArrayList<>(inputPaths.size());
for (Object inputPathObj : inputPaths) {
String inputPath = (String) inputPathObj;
try {
RequestEntity.BodyBuilder requestBodyBuilder = RequestEntity.method(HttpMethod.GET, new URI(inputPath)); // change to appropriate HttpMethod, maybe some mapping?
// add headers and stuff....
final RequestEntity<Void> requestEntity = requestBodyBuilder.build(); // when you have a request body change Void to e.g. String
ResponseEntity<String> responseEntity = null;
try {
responseEntity = restTemplate.exchange(requestEntity, String.class);
} catch (final HttpClientErrorException ex) {
// add your exception handling here, e.g.
responseEntity = new ResponseEntity<>(ex.getResponseHeaders(), ex.getStatusCode());
throw ex;
} finally {
response.add(responseEntity.getBody());
}
} catch (URISyntaxException e) {
// exception handling here
}
}
return response;
}
Note that generic do not work for the #RequestBody inputPaths.
See alse http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/current/javadoc-api/org/springframework/web/client/RestTemplate.html and https://spring.io/guides/gs/consuming-rest/ .

I agree with the other answers that you should consider this feature outside of your project, instead of having it in the code. It is a question of design and you can choose the approach you want. Based on your comment that these are GET requests, you can achieve what you want with a request dispatcher to trigger your requests within your special Controller service method for each URL and capture the response with a HttpServletResponseWrapper instance.
In the following code sample, the "consolidate" method takes comma separated URLs like this ("http://localhost:8080/index/index1,index2", here "index1,index2" is the URL list), consolidates their text output into a single payload and returns it. For this example URL, the consolidated outputs of http://localhost:8080/index1 and http://localhost:8080/index2 will be returned. You might want to extend/modify this with added parameters, validation, etc for the URLs. I tested this code with Spring Boot 1.2.x.
#Controller
public class MyController {
#RequestMapping("/index/{urls}")
#ResponseBody
String consolidate(#PathVariable String[] urls, HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response) {
StringBuilder responseBody = new StringBuilder();
//iterate for each URL provided
for (String url : urls) {
RequestDispatcher dispatcher = request.getServletContext().getRequestDispatcher("/" + url);
HttpServletResponseWrapper wrapper = new HttpServletResponseWrapper((HttpServletResponse) response) {
private CharArrayWriter output = new CharArrayWriter();
#Override
public PrintWriter getWriter() {
return new PrintWriter(output);
}
#Override
public String toString() {
return output.toString();
}
};
try {
dispatcher.include(request, wrapper);
//append the response text
responseBody.append(wrapper.toString());
} catch (ServletException | IOException e) {
// TODO Auto-generated catch block
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
//This holds the consolidated output
return responseBody.toString();
}
#RequestMapping("/index1")
String index1() {
return "index1";
}
#RequestMapping("/index2")
String index2() {
return "index2";
}
}

Issues with streaming apis on spring mvc framework

I am writing a spring boot app which has REST apis (using spring mvc framework) that stream audio/video to HTML5 player on the browser. These apis support range requests for the content.
I have run into an issue where the HTML5 video player complains with error ERR_CONTENT_LENGTH_MISMATCH periodically during streaming.
It seems that bytes received from server do not match bytes advertised by server in Content-Length header.
Please advise what could be the root cause of this.
Things that I have researched so far that could potentially solve the issue but haven't in my case:
No buffering in response.
No apache in front of tomcat.
Here is my code:
#Api("Player API")
#RestController
public class PlayerController {
#Autowired
FetchAssetService fetchAssetService;
#ApiOperation("Get video")
#RequestMapping(value = "player/video/{packageId}/{username}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public ResponseEntity<StreamingResponseBody> getProxy(#RequestHeader(value="Range", required=false) String range, #PathVariable Long packageId, #PathVariable String username) throws Exception {
Optional<Stream> videoAssetMetaData = fetchAssetService.fetchVideoAssetMetaData(packageId);
if (!videoAssetMetaData.isPresent()) {
throw new AssetNotFoundException("Video asset not found in MPL for package: "+packageId);
}
HttpHeaders httpHeaders = new HttpHeaders();
HttpStatus status = HttpStatus.OK;
Optional<AssetRange> optionalAssetRange = AssetRange.create(range,videoAssetMetaData.get().getLength());
if (optionalAssetRange.isPresent()) {
if (optionalAssetRange.get().isSatisfiable()) {
setSuccessRangeHeaders(httpHeaders,optionalAssetRange.get());
status = HttpStatus.PARTIAL_CONTENT;
} else {
setErrorRangeHeaders(httpHeaders,optionalAssetRange.get());
status = HttpStatus.REQUESTED_RANGE_NOT_SATISFIABLE;
return new ResponseEntity(null,httpHeaders,status);
}
}
setContentHeaders(httpHeaders, “video.mp4");
try {
return new ResponseEntity(fetchAssetService.getStreamingResponseBody(packageId,videoAssetMetaData.get(),optionalAssetRange,username),
httpHeaders,
status);
} catch (Exception ex) {
log.error("Exception while video streaming: package={}, user={}, range={}",packageId,username,range,ex);
throw ex;
}
}
private void setContentHeaders(HttpHeaders httpHeaders, String fileName) {
httpHeaders.add(HttpHeaders.ACCEPT_RANGES,"bytes");
httpHeaders.add(HttpHeaders.CONTENT_TYPE, MediaType.APPLICATION_OCTET_STREAM_VALUE);
httpHeaders.add(HttpHeaders.CONTENT_DISPOSITION,"attachment; filename="+ fileName);
}
private void setSuccessRangeHeaders(HttpHeaders httpHeaders, AssetRange range) {
httpHeaders.add(HttpHeaders.CONTENT_LENGTH, Long.toString(range.getRangeLength()));
httpHeaders.add(HttpHeaders.CONTENT_RANGE, String.format("bytes %d-%d/%d", range.getStart(), range.getEnd(), range.getTotalLength()));
}
private void setErrorRangeHeaders(HttpHeaders httpHeaders, AssetRange range) {
httpHeaders.add(HttpHeaders.CONTENT_RANGE, String.format("bytes */%d", range.getTotalLength()));
}
#ExceptionHandler(AssetNotFoundException.class)
#ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.NOT_FOUND)
public String handleAppException(AssetNotFoundException ex) {
return ex.getMessage();
}
#ExceptionHandler(Exception.class)
#ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR)
public String handleAppException(Exception ex) {
return ex.getMessage();
}
}

Best guess,
in setSuccessRangeHeaders, you are setting the content length to a range value rather than the actual content length of your response.
try not setting content_length at all or try setting it more accurately.
this might help:
How to set content length as long value in http header in java?

How to respond with HTTP status code in a Spring MVC #RestController #ResponseBody class returning an object?

I'm trying to have a #RestController which takes a #PathVariable return a specific object in JSON format, along with proper status code. So far the way the code is, it will return the object in JSON format because it is using Spring 4 built in Jackson library by default.
However I do not know how to make it so it will give a message to the user saying we want an api variable, then JSON data, then Error code (Or success code depending if all went well). Example output would be:
Please enter api value as parameter (NOTE this can be in JSON as well if needed)
{"id": 2, "api": "3000105000" ... } (NOTE this will be the JSON response object)
Status Code 400 (OR proper status code)
The url with parameter look like this
http://localhost:8080/gotech/api/v1/api/3000105000
The code I have so far:
#RestController
#RequestMapping(value = "/api/v1")
public class ClientFetchWellDataController {
#Autowired
private OngardWellService ongardWellService;
#RequestMapping(value = "/wells/{apiValue}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
#ResponseBody
public OngardWell fetchWellData(#PathVariable String apiValue){
try{
OngardWell ongardWell = new OngardWell();
ongardWell = ongardWellService.fetchOneByApi(apiValue);
return ongardWell;
}catch(Exception ex){
String errorMessage;
errorMessage = ex + " <== error";
return null;
}
}
}

A #RestController is not appropriate for this. If you need to return different types of responses, use a ResponseEntity<?> where you can explicitly set the status code.
The body of the ResponseEntity will be handled the same way as the return value of any #ResponseBody annotated method.
#RequestMapping(value = "/wells/{apiValue}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public ResponseEntity<?> fetchWellData(#PathVariable String apiValue){
try{
OngardWell ongardWell = new OngardWell();
ongardWell = ongardWellService.fetchOneByApi(apiValue);
return new ResponseEntity<>(ongardWell, HttpStatus.OK);
}catch(Exception ex){
String errorMessage;
errorMessage = ex + " <== error";
return new ResponseEntity<>(errorMessage, HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST);
}
}
Note that you don't need #ResponseBody on a #RequestMapping method within a #RestController annotated class.

The idiomatic way would be to use an exception handler instead of catching the exception in your regular request handling method. The type of exception determines the response code. (403 for security error, 500 for unexpected platform exceptions, whatever you like)
#ExceptionHandler(MyApplicationException.class)
#ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST)
public String handleAppException(MyApplicationException ex) {
return ex.getMessage();
}
#ExceptionHandler(Exception.class)
#ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR)
public String handleAppException(Exception ex) {
return ex.getMessage();
}

How to handle exceptions in Spring MVC differently for HTML and JSON requests

I'm using the following exception handler in Spring 4.0.3 to intercept exceptions and display a custom error page to the user:
#ControllerAdvice
public class ExceptionHandlerController
{
#ExceptionHandler(value = Exception.class)
public ModelAndView handleError(HttpServletRequest request, Exception e)
{
ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView("/errors/500"));
mav.addObject("exception", e);
return mav;
}
}
But now I want a different handling for JSON requests so I get JSON error responses for this kind of requests when an exception occurred. Currently the above code is also triggered by JSON requests (Using an Accept: application/json header) and the JavaScript client doesn't like the HTML response.
How can I handle exceptions differently for HTML and JSON requests?

The ControllerAdvice annotation has an element/attribute called basePackage which can be set to determine which packages it should scan for Controllers and apply the advices. So, what you can do is to separate those Controllers handling normal requests and those handling AJAX requests into different packages then write 2 Exception Handling Controllers with appropriate ControllerAdvice annotations. For example:
#ControllerAdvice("com.acme.webapp.ajaxcontrollers")
public class AjaxExceptionHandlingController {
...
#ControllerAdvice("com.acme.webapp.controllers")
public class ExceptionHandlingController {

The best way to do this (especially in servlet 3) is to register an error page with the container, and use that to call a Spring #Controller. That way you get to handle different response types in a standard Spring MVC way (e.g. using #RequestMapping with produces=... for your machine clients).
I see from your other question that you are using Spring Boot. If you upgrade to a snapshot (1.1 or better in other words) you get this behaviour out of the box (see BasicErrorController). If you want to override it you just need to map the /error path to your own #Controller.

As you have the HttpServletRequest, you should be able to get the request "Accept" header. Then you could process the exception based on it.
Something like:
String header = request.getHeader("Accept");
if(header != null && header.equals("application/json")) {
// Process JSON exception
} else {
ModelAndView mav = new ModelAndView("/errors/500"));
mav.addObject("exception", e);
return mav;
}

Since i didn't find any solution for this, i wrote some code that manually checks the accept header of the request to determine the format. I then check if the user is logged in and either send the complete stacktrace if he is or a short error message.
I use ResponseEntity to be able to return both JSON or HTML like here.
Code:
#ExceptionHandler(Exception.class)
public ResponseEntity<?> handleExceptions(Exception ex, HttpServletRequest request) throws Exception {
final HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
Object answer; // String if HTML, any object if JSON
if(jsonHasPriority(request.getHeader("accept"))) {
logger.info("Returning exception to client as json object");
headers.setContentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON);
answer = errorJson(ex, isUserLoggedIn());
} else {
logger.info("Returning exception to client as html page");
headers.setContentType(MediaType.TEXT_HTML);
answer = errorHtml(ex, isUserLoggedIn());
}
final HttpStatus status = HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR;
return new ResponseEntity<>(answer, headers, status);
}
private String errorHtml(Exception e, boolean isUserLoggedIn) {
String error = // html code with exception information here
return error;
}
private Object errorJson(Exception e, boolean isUserLoggedIn) {
// return error wrapper object which will be converted to json
return null;
}
/**
* #param acceptString - HTTP accept header field, format according to HTTP spec:
* "mime1;quality1,mime2;quality2,mime3,mime4,..." (quality is optional)
* #return true only if json is the MIME type with highest quality of all specified MIME types.
*/
private boolean jsonHasPriority(String acceptString) {
if (acceptString != null) {
final String[] mimes = acceptString.split(",");
Arrays.sort(mimes, new MimeQualityComparator());
final String firstMime = mimes[0].split(";")[0];
return firstMime.equals("application/json");
}
return false;
}
private static class MimeQualityComparator implements Comparator<String> {
#Override
public int compare(String mime1, String mime2) {
final double m1Quality = getQualityofMime(mime1);
final double m2Quality = getQualityofMime(mime2);
return Double.compare(m1Quality, m2Quality) * -1;
}
}
/**
* #param mimeAndQuality - "mime;quality" pair from the accept header of a HTTP request,
* according to HTTP spec (missing mimeQuality means quality = 1).
* #return quality of this pair according to HTTP spec.
*/
private static Double getQualityofMime(String mimeAndQuality) {
//split off quality factor
final String[] mime = mimeAndQuality.split(";");
if (mime.length <= 1) {
return 1.0;
} else {
final String quality = mime[1].split("=")[1];
return Double.parseDouble(quality);
}
}

The trick is to have a REST controller with two mappings, one of which specifies "text/html" and returns a valid HTML source. The example below, which was tested in Spring Boot 2.0, assumes the existence of a separate template named "error.html".
#RestController
public class CustomErrorController implements ErrorController {
#Autowired
private ErrorAttributes errorAttributes;
private Map<String,Object> getErrorAttributes( HttpServletRequest request ) {
WebRequest webRequest = new ServletWebRequest(request);
boolean includeStacktrace = false;
return errorAttributes.getErrorAttributes(webRequest,includeStacktrace);
}
#GetMapping(value="/error", produces="text/html")
ModelAndView errorHtml(HttpServletRequest request) {
return new ModelAndView("error.html",getErrorAttributes(request));
}
#GetMapping(value="/error")
Map<String,Object> error(HttpServletRequest request) {
return getErrorAttributes(request);
}
#Override public String getErrorPath() { return "/error"; }
}
References
ModelAndView -- return type for HTML
DefaultErrorAttributes -- data used to render HTML template (and JSON response)
BasicErrorController.java -- Spring Boot source from which this example was derived

The controlleradvice annotation has several properties that can be set, since spring 4. You can define multiple controller advices applying different rules.
One property is "annotations. Probably you can use a specific annotation on the json request mapping or you might find another property more usefull?

Use #ControllerAdvice
Let the exception handler send a DTO containing the field errors.
#ExceptionHandler(MethodArgumentNotValidException.class)
#ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.BAD_REQUEST)
#ResponseBody
public ValidationErrorDTO processValidationError(MethodArgumentNotValidException ex) {
BindingResult result = ex.getBindingResult();
List<FieldError> fieldErrors = result.getFieldErrors();
return processFieldErrors(fieldErrors);
}
This code is of this website:http://www.petrikainulainen.net/programming/spring-framework/spring-from-the-trenches-adding-validation-to-a-rest-api/
Look there for more info.