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Spring RequestBody with either List<Object> or Object. Name for both are same "data"

I want to handle json request for List of Object and Object it self in the same Spring controller. Below is the exact example.
Json Request for Single Object:
{"data":{"prop":"123456","prop2":"123456"}}
Json Request for List of Objects:
{"data":[{"prop":"123456","prop2":"123456"},{"prop":"123456","prop2":"123456"}]}
My Controller is as follow.
#PostMapping(path="/path")
public #ResponseBody String getSomething(#RequestBody Input data){
return service.getSomething(data);
}
I want to handle both of this requests in a single spring controller.
Appreciate your help.
Thanks.

Its been some time.
However I was facing the same issue and was thinking whether any solution is there
The below worked for me
#JsonFormat(with = JsonFormat.Feature.ACCEPT_SINGLE_VALUE_AS_ARRAY)
private List<Data> data;

EDIT
You can create DTOs for your inputs but receive the #RequestBody as a JSON string and then parse it as a list or a single object request.
DTO for a request list:
public class InputDataList {
private List<Input> data;
// getters and setters
}
DTO for a single request object:
public class InputDataSingle {
private Input data;
// getters and setters
}
Then on your controller:
#PostMapping(path="/path")
public #ResponseBody String getSomething(#RequestBody String json){
// this is better done in a service but for simplicity, I write it in the controller
try {
InputDataSingle data = new ObjectMapper().readValue(json, InputDataSingle.class);
// If fails to parse as a single object, parse as a list
} catch (Exception) (
InputDataList data = new ObjectMapper().readValue(json, InputDataList.class);
}
// handle objects in the service layer
}

Sorry, Really not a good workaround (solution), because it is not kind of misleading and poor for maintainability, secondly not good at all to keep code in the catch block and this is violating the coding principles.
I would highly suggest splitting 2 endpoints one for single i.e (/something) and another for list (/something-batch)

Does Spring MVC 4 consider Jackson annotation of parameters?

There is a class as follow:
class A {
#JsonProperty("first_name")
String firstName;
}
And a MVC controller:
public A createNewA(A a){
...
}
I expect the following REST create an instance of A with first name:
POST: /path/to/resouce
Form data
first_name: Ali
But the first name is null. By the way, the following request works fine:
POST: /path/to/resouce
Form data
firstName: Ali
As I debug, ServletModelAttributeMethodProcessor is used to resolve parameter and where objects are Considered as bean.
Is there any parameter resolver to check jackson annotation?

Jackson is used to parse and serialize JSON. You're sending x-www-form-urlencoded data. So Jackson is irrelevant.
If you send a JSON request body, and thus annotate the a parameter with #RequestBody, then Jackson will be used, and will honor the annotation.

Default resolver of spring-mvc to convert method arguments to bean objects uses exactly name of fields in the bean to search in key-values sent in the request. If you want another behavior you should implement yours resolver. To do that you should implement HandlerMethodArgumentResolver which has two main method.
In your case which you want resolver behaves similar to jackson deserializer you could implement such resolver as follow. This resolver create an map of key-values from parameters of sent request then uses jackson mapper to fill a bean object by given key-values:
public class BeanObjectParameterResolver implements HandlerMethodArgumentResolver {
#Inject
ObjectMapper mapper;
#Override
public Object resolveArgument(MethodParameter parameter, ModelAndViewContainer mavContainer,
NativeWebRequest webRequest, WebDataBinderFactory binderFactory) throws Exception {
Map<String, Object> params = new HashMap<>();
Iterator<String> enumName = webRequest.getParameterNames();
while(enumName.hasNext()){
String name = enumName.next();
params.put(name, webRequest.getParameter(name));
}
// jackson 1.9 and before
// mapper.configure(DeserializationConfig.Feature.FAIL_ON_UNKNOWN_PROPERTIES, false);
// or jackson 2.0
mapper.configure(DeserializationFeature.FAIL_ON_UNKNOWN_PROPERTIES, false);
Object obj = mapper.convertValue(params, parameter.getParameterType());
return obj;
}
#Override
public boolean supportsParameter(MethodParameter parameter) {
return !BeanUtils.isSimpleProperty(parameter.getParameterType());
}
}

How to save arbitrarily-structured documents with Java DynamoDBMapper class

I'm using Amazon's DynamoDBMapper Java class to save data to a DynamoDB table. This code needs to work for data structured in multiple different ways, so I would like to stay away from writing particularly structure-specific code. For this reason, I store the code as JSON objects in Java -- which are basically glorified HashMaps.
I would like to store these JSON objects into DynamoDB as Dynamo's relatively new JSON Document type.
The way the DynamoDBMapper API works is essentially that you write a Java class (typically a POJO), then add some annotations, then pass your objects of that class into DynamoDBMapper so that it can then put items into the database with the structure of the Java class. This works well for many aspects of what I'm doing, but not with the fact that I want these classes to contain arbitrarily-structured JSON documents. This is the way you're meant to store JSON documents using DynamoDBMapper, and as you can see, it doesn't allow for the structure of the documents to be arbitrary.
I realize I could use Dynamo's putItem() to pass the jsons as Strings into Item objects -- I just wanted to see if what I want to do is possible with DynamoDBMapper before I shift my approach.

You can try using the DynamoDB Java document SDK instead of the object mapper. This allows you to serialize and deserialize JSON strings using the fromJSON and toJSON methods in the Item class. Check out http://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/JavaDocumentAPIItemCRUD.html.

Here's how I came up with my answer of how to store arbitrary Map objects in DynamoDB. This is extremely useful for archiving REST API responses that have been unmarshaled to foreign objects. I'm personally using this to archive REST responses from the PayPal Payment API. I don't care what variables they use in their REST API or the structure of their POJO / beans. I just want to make sure I save everything.
#DynamoDBTable(tableName = "PaymentResponse")
#JsonIgnoreProperties(ignoreUnknown = true)
#JsonTypeInfo(use = JsonTypeInfo.Id.NAME, include = JsonTypeInfo.As.PROPERTY)
#JsonSubTypes({
#JsonSubTypes.Type(value = PayPalPaymentResponse.class, name = "PayPalPaymentResponse"),
#JsonSubTypes.Type(value = BatchPayPalPaymentResponse.class, name = "BatchPayPalPaymentResponse")}
)
public abstract class PaymentResponse {
// store any arbitrary REST resrponse data in map form so we don't have to worry about the
// structure or the actual response itself
protected Map<String, String> paymentResponseData = Maps.newHashMap();
public PaymentResponse(PaymentResponseType paymentResponseType) {
this.paymentResponseType = paymentResponseType;
}
public Map<String, String> getPaymentResponseData() { return paymentResponseData; }
public void setPaymentResponseData(Map<String, String> paymentResponseData) { this.paymentResponseData = paymentResponseData; }
#Override
public String toString() {
return Arrays.toString(paymentResponseData.entrySet().toArray());
}
}
public class ConverterUtils {
public static BatchPayPalPaymentResponse getBatchPayPalPaymentResponse(PayoutBatch payoutBatch) throws IOException {
//read in the PayoutBatch response data and convert it first to a JSON string and then convert the
//JSON string into a Map<String, String>
Map<String, String> responseData = objectMapper.readValue(objectMapper.writeValueAsString(payoutBatch), new TypeReference<Map<String, String>>() {});
BatchPayPalPaymentResponse batchPayPalPaymentResponse = new BatchPayPalPaymentResponse(responseData);
return batchPayPalPaymentResponse;
}
public static PayPalPaymentResponse getSinglePayPalPaymentResponse(PayoutItemDetails payoutItemDetails) throws IOException {
//read in the paypal PayoutItemDetails response data and convert it first to a JSON string and then convert the
//JSON string into a Map<String, String>
Map<String, String> responseData = objectMapper.readValue(objectMapper.writeValueAsString(payoutItemDetails), new TypeReference<Map<String, String>>() {});
PayPalPaymentResponse payPalPaymentResponse = new PayPalPaymentResponse(responseData);
return payPalPaymentResponse;
}
}
public class BatchPayPalPaymentResponse extends PaymentResponse {
public BatchPayPalPaymentResponse(Map<String, String> responseData) {
super(responseData);
}
....
....
....
}
public class PayPalPaymentResponse extends PaymentResponse {
public PayPalPaymentResponse(Map<String, String> responseData) {
super(responseData);
}
....
....
....
}
Now you can just call mapper.save(instanceOfPaymentResponse). Note that my code also includes how to use a Jackson parser to pick and choose which sub-class of PaymentResponse to unmarshal too. That's because I use a DynamoDBTypeConverter to marshal my class to a string before putting it into the database.
Finally, I'll throw in my converter for completeness so it all hopefully makes sense.
public class PaymentResponseConverter implements DynamoDBTypeConverter<String, PaymentResponse> {
private static final ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();
static {
objectMapper.setSerializationInclusion(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL);
}
#Override
public String convert(PaymentResponse object) {
try {
return objectMapper.writeValueAsString(object);
} catch (JsonProcessingException e) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException(String.format("Received invalid instance of PaymentResponse and cannot marshal it to a string (%s)", e.getMessage()));
}
}
#Override
public PaymentResponse unconvert(String object) {
try {
return objectMapper.readValue(object, PaymentResponse.class);
} catch (IOException e) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException(String.format("Unable to convert JSON to instance of PaymentResponse. This is a fatal error. (%s)", e.getMessage()));
}
}
}

I had the same problem and went the route of serializing and deserializing objects to json string by myself and then just store them as strings. The whole Document concept of DynamoDB is IMHO just a glorified object serializer. Only if you need to access attributes inside your object in dynamodb actions (eg. scans, projections) it makes sense to use the json document type. If our data is opaque to dynamodb, you are better off with strings.

Custom response on bad request using spring RestController

I have the following controller. I am using Spring to create Restful APIs.
#RestController
public class UserController extends RestControlValidator {
#RequestMapping(value = "/user/", method = RequestMethod.POST, headers = "Accept=application/json", consumes = "application/json", produces = MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE)
public #ResponseBody List newUser(#RequestBody #Valid UserInput input,BindingResult result)
{Some code}
}
The UserInput class looks like this:
public class UserInput{
#NotEmpty
private String emailId;
#NotEmpty
private String fName;
private String lName;
private int sex;
//getters and setters
Now when I try and access /user/ with data {"sex":"Male"}, I get the following response:
I want the response in case of such a request to be:
{"errors":{"sex":"The value must be an integer"}}
Is there any way of customising BAD REQUEST responses in Spring?

Considering the current scenario the most ideal solution would be to alter the behavior of HandlerMethodArgumentResolve as the json to pojo constructed by #RequestBody fails because we dont get a chance to check the wrong data and this check can very well be done in the custom message converter
A. first we would need to create LanguageMessageConverter as follows
public class LanguageMessageConverter extends
AbstractHttpMessageConverter<Language> {
private Gson gson = new Gson();
public LanguageMessageConverter() {
super(new MediaType("application", "json", Charset.forName("UTF-8")));
}
#Override
protected boolean supports(Class<?> clazz) {
return Language.class.equals(clazz);
}
Map<String, String> mp = new HashMap<>();
#Override
protected Language readInternal(Class<? extends Language> clazz,
HttpInputMessage httpInputMessage) throws IOException,
HttpMessageNotReadableException {
Map langmp = gson.fromJson(
convertStreamToString(httpInputMessage.getBody()), Map.class);
for (Field field : clazz.getDeclaredFields()) {
if (!langmp.get(field.getName()).getClass().getCanonicalName().equals(field.getType().getCanonicalName())) {
if (field.getType().getCanonicalName().equals("java.lang.Integer")||field.getType().getCanonicalName().toString().equals("int")) {
langmp.put(field.getName(), "0");
} else if (field.getType().equals("java.lang.String")) {
//TODO COde needs to be improved here because this check is not efficient
langmp.put(field.getName(), "wrong");
}
}
}
Language lang = gson.fromJson(gson.toJson(langmp), clazz);
return lang;
}
we need to set the media type new MediaType("application", "json", Charset.forName("UTF-8")) which will make sure this class intervenes the mentioned MIME type
Considering we need to manipulate the result I found it best to convert it to map langmp (There are better JSON Parsers which can be used)
Since we need to to understand the existing type I used reflection api to get the fields via getDeclaredFields()
Using the above made the logical check using the datatype to understand if the type is incorrect for eg if the field datatype is int and if it is found as String then corresponding map value will be substituted
once that is done the map will hold the updated values where in if the data was wrong a default value would be set eg if the int var is set to 0 since the originating json had a String in it.
Once that is done the updated map is converted to the concerned class.
B. Secondly we need to register the custom MessageConverter in the dispatcher xml i.e. LanguageMessageConverter
<mvc:annotation-driven >
<mvc:message-converters register-defaults="true">
<bean class="com.comp.org.controller.LanguageMessageConverter" />
</mvc:message-converters>
</mvc:annotation-driven>
register-defaults="true" is very important since we are adding Custom MessageConverter but we also need the other existing converters working along with the one we have added
LanguageMessageConverter needs to be registered here.
C. Considering the concerned pojo is populated with the necessary details it would reach our controller post processing in the custom converter now we would add the manual validation eg. if the int variable has 0 the necessary error json should be returned
As per your request even if the json consists of the wrong data the custom message converter should process it and accordingly in the controller we can validate the condition mentioned.
The code definitely can be improved further. Kindly let me know if this solution fulfilled your requirement or any part of the code requires further elaboration and hopefully addressed your concern.

I had the same issue, than I solved that way:
Create an Object called Error, like that (don't forget to implement Serializable...):
private String fieldName;
private String errorCode;
private String defaultMessage;
public Error() {
}
public Error(String fieldName, String errorCode, String defaultMessage) {
this.fieldName = fieldName;
this.errorCode = errorCode;
this.defaultMessage = defaultMessage;
}
/* getters, setters */
Inside the #RestController method you ave to call inputValidator.validate() method (if you didn't create an Object Validator for your UserInput then we're really don't speaking the same language...)
// validating the userInput
userInputValidator.validate(userInput, bindingResult);
if (bindingResult.hasErrors()) {
List<Error> errors = new ArrayList<>(bindingResult.getErrorCount());
for (FieldError fieldWithError : bindingResult.getFieldErrors()) {
errors.add(new Error(fieldWithError.getField(), fieldWithError.getCode(), fieldWithError.getDefaultMessage()));
}
return errors;
}
// in case of success:
return null;
Finally you'll have to translate the JSON object to your client side. You'll have two kind of objects:
3.1. null (undefined depending on the language you're using)
3.2. A JSON object like that:
[
{
"fieldName": "name",
"errorCode": "user.input.name.in.blank",
"defaultMessage": "Insert a valid name!"
},
{
"fieldName": "firstPhone",
"errorCode": "user.input.first.phone.blank",
"defaultMessage": "Insert a valid first phone!"
}
]

Parsing JSON object using jQuery and GSON returned by Spring controller

I was looking for some solution around here and I didnt find any correct answer to my question so I would like to ask you.
I have POJO with some simple attribs. and one List of another POJOs.
public class Standard implements Serializable {
private String id;
private String title;
private String description;
private Set<Interpretation> interpretations = new LinkedHashSet<Interpretation>();
}
public class Interpretation implements Serializable {
private String id;
private String title;
private String description;
}
In my controller class, I am returning Standard POJO with GSON.
#RequestMapping(value="/fillStandard", method= RequestMethod.GET)
public #ResponseBody String getStandard(#RequestParam String id) {
Standard s = DAOFactory.getInstance().getStandardDAO().findById(id);
return new Gson().toJson(s);
}
The question is, am I able to get the list of interpretations in my Standard POJO using jQuery ? Something like :
function newStandard() {
$.get("standard/fillStandard.htm", {id:"fe86742b2024"}, function(data) {
alert(data.interpretations[0].title);
});
}
Thanks a lot !
EDIT:
Well, thanks to #Atticus, there is solution of my problem. Hope that it will help somebody.
#RequestMapping(value="/fillStandard", method= RequestMethod.GET, produces="application/json")
public #ResponseBody Standard getStandard(#RequestParam String id) {
Standard s = DAOFactory.getInstance().getStandardDAO().findById(id);
return s;
}
Using #ResponseBody allows you to return the whole POJO, but you need to add produces="application/json" to your #RequestMapping annotation. Then you will be able to catch a returning object as JSON in jQuery like as I supposed.
function newStandard() {
$.get("standard/fillStandard.htm", {id:"idOfStandard"}, function(data) {
alert(data.id); //Standard id
alert(data.interpretations[0].title); //id of Interpretation on first place in array
});

Well you have to create and register your custom serializer.
It goes like this:
//You create your builder that registers your custom serializer with the class you want to serialize
GsonBuilder builder = new GsonBuilder();
builder.registerTypeAdapter(Standard.class, new StandardSerializer());
//Then you create your Gson object
Gson gson = builder.create();
//Then you pass your object to the gson like
Standard s = DAOFactory.getInstance().getStandardDAO().findById(id);
gson.toJson(s);
Your serializer looks like this:
public class StandardSerializer implements JsonSerializer<Standard>{
#Override
public JsonElement serialize(Standard src, Type typeOfSrc,
JsonSerializationContext context) {
JsonObject obj = new JsonObject();
//You put your simple objects in like this
obj.add("id",new JsonPrimitive(src.getId()));
//You put your complex objects in like this
JsonObject interpretations = new JsonObject();
//Here you need to parse your LinkedHashSet object and set up the values.
//For the sake of simplicity I just access the properties (even though I know this would not compile)
interpretations.add("title", src.getInterpretation().getTitle());
obj.add("interpretations", interpretations);
return obj;
}
}
In this case your Json would look something like:
{"id":"idValue", "title":"titleValue", "description":"descriptionValue", "interpretations":["id":"interpretationIdValue"]}
Now, you can access your data with jQuery like this:
function newStandard() {
$.get("standard/fillStandard.htm", {id:"fe86742b2024"}, function(data) {
alert(data.interpretations.title);
});
}
I hope this helps.
EDIT:
I see that your response gets converted to the declared method argument type which is String (as stated here: 16.3.3.2 Supported method return types). But what you really want is your Standrad POJO converted to JSON. I am not very familiar with Spring but as I have read here (16.3.2.6 Producible Media Types) there is another, maybe easier solution. If you want to return a JSON object, then change the return type of the
getStandard method to Standard instead of String and add produces="application/json" to your #RequestMapping annotation. As far as I have read this should tell Spring that the return type should be converted to JSON. In this case you do not need to use Gson.