Spring MVC Rest - Content Negotiation using JSON/XML

In this example we will show how we can determine which  data format to return  writing just a single controller method. In this example we either return XML or JSON and the system knows whether to convert to XML or JSON because of content negotiation. This example is based on the example provided by Paul on the link below.

I have taken what Paul described into a working example of my own using Content Negotiation with Spring MVC Rest support.

http://spring.io/blog/2013/05/11/content-negotiation-using-spring-mvc

The project I created looks as follows

The complete code for this example exists on GitHub as follows

https://github.com/papicella/SpringMVCRest-ContentNegotiation

1. Create the required pom.xml dependancy elements as shown below.

pom.xml

  
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
  <groupId>springmvc-rest</groupId>
  <artifactId>springmvc-rest</artifactId>
  <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
  <packaging>war</packaging>
  <properties>
   <spring.version>3.2.4.RELEASE</spring.version>
  </properties>
  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId>
      <version>${spring.version}</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
     <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
     <artifactId>spring-web</artifactId>
     <version>${spring.version}</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
     <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
     <artifactId>spring-webmvc</artifactId>
     <version>${spring.version}</version>
    </dependency>
 <dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-aop</artifactId>
  <version>${spring.version}</version>
 </dependency>
    <dependency>
     <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
     <artifactId>jstl</artifactId>
     <version>1.2</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
     <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
     <artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>
     <version>3.0.1</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
     <groupId>javax.servlet</groupId>
     <artifactId>javax.servlet-api</artifactId>
     <version>3.0.1</version>
     <scope>provided</scope>
 </dependency> 
 <dependency>
  <groupId>org.codehaus.jackson</groupId>
  <artifactId>jackson-mapper-asl</artifactId>
  <version>1.9.4</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax.xml.bind</groupId>
        <artifactId>jaxb-api</artifactId>
        <version>2.2.6</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>javax.xml</groupId>
        <artifactId>jaxb-impl</artifactId>
        <version>2.1</version>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
</project>

2. Create a Person class as follows

Person.java

  
package apples.au.pivotal;

import java.io.Serializable;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

@XmlRootElement
public class Person implements Serializable
{

 private int id;
 private String firstName;
 private String lastName;
 
 public Person() 
 {
  // TODO Auto-generated constructor stub
 }

 public Person(int id, String firstName, String lastName) {
  super();
  this.id = id;
  this.firstName = firstName;
  this.lastName = lastName;
 }

 public int getId() {
  return id;
 }

 public void setId(int id) {
  this.id = id;
 }

 public String getFirstName() {
  return firstName;
 }

 public void setFirstName(String firstName) {
  this.firstName = firstName;
 }

 public String getLastName() {
  return lastName;
 }

 public void setLastName(String lastName) {
  this.lastName = lastName;
 }

 @Override
 public String toString() {
  return "Person [id=" + id + ", firstName=" + firstName + ", lastName="
    + lastName + "]";
 }

} 

3. Create a People class which provides a list of Person objects, we do this so we can return XML as a List doesn't work directly with JAXB

People.java

  
package apples.au.pivotal;

import java.util.List;

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlElement;
import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

@XmlRootElement(name="people")
@SuppressWarnings("serial")
public class People 
{
  private List<Person> people;
    
  protected People() {}   // Keep JAXB happy
    
  public People(List<Person> people)
  {
     this.people = people;
  }
   
    @XmlElement(name="person")
    public List<Person> getPeople() 
    {
     return people;
    }

} 

4. Create a controller as follows, there is a request mapping for HTML as well here with the same path, which is the default, in order not to duplicate code we call the JSON/XML method from the HTML method itself.

PersonController.java

  
package apples.au.pivotal.controllers;

import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;

import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

import org.springframework.http.HttpStatus;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.ui.Model;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMethod;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ResponseBody;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.ResponseStatus;

import apples.au.pivotal.People;
import apples.au.pivotal.Person;

@Controller
public class PersonController 
{

 private static List<Person> personList;

 static
 {
  personList = 
    Arrays.asList(new Person[] 
      { new Person(1, "Pas", "Apicella"),
           new Person(2, "Lucia", "Apicella"),
           new Person(3, "Lucas", "Apicella"),
           new Person(4, "Siena", "Apicella")
         });   
 }

    @RequestMapping(value="/people", 
              method = RequestMethod.GET, 
              produces={"application/xml", "application/json"})
    @ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.OK)
    public @ResponseBody People listWithJSON() 
    {
     return new People(personList);

    }
    
    // View-based method
    @RequestMapping(value = "/people", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public String listWithView(Model model, HttpServletResponse response, HttpServletRequest request) 
    {
         
     // Call RESTful method to avoid repeating code
     model.addAttribute("peopleList", listWithJSON().getPeople());

     // Return the view to use for rendering the response
     return "people";
    }
} 

5. Create a Spring XML file as follows

applicationContext.xml

  
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
 xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
 xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
 xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util"
 xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc"
 xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.2.xsd
  http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
  http://www.springframework.org/schema/util http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util-3.2.xsd
  http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.2.xsd">


 <!-- Activates various annotations to be detected in bean classes -->
 <context:annotation-config />
 
 <!-- Scans the classpath for annotated components that will be auto-registered as Spring beans.
  For example @Controller and @Service. Make sure to set the correct base-package-->
 <context:component-scan base-package="apples.au.pivotal.controllers" />
 
    <!-- Configures the annotation-driven Spring MVC Controller programming model.
  Note that, with Spring 3.0, this tag works in Servlet MVC only!  -->
 
 
 <bean id="cnManager"
    class="org.springframework.web.accept.ContentNegotiationManagerFactoryBean">
  <property name="favorPathExtension" value="true"/>
  <property name="ignoreAcceptHeader" value="true" />
  <property name="defaultContentType" value="text/html" />
  <property name="useJaf" value="false"/>

  <property name="mediaTypes">
    <map>
   <entry key="html" value="text/html" />
   <entry key="json" value="application/json" />
   <entry key="xml" value="application/xml" />
    </map>
  </property>
 </bean>

 <mvc:annotation-driven content-negotiation-manager="cnManager"/>

 <bean class="apples.au.pivotal.MvcConfiguringPostProcessor" />

</beans>

6. Create a class to enable pretty print for JSON data

MvcConfiguringPostProcessor.java

  
package apples.au.pivotal;

import org.springframework.beans.BeansException;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.config.BeanPostProcessor;
import org.springframework.http.converter.HttpMessageConverter;
import org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter;
import org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter;
/**
* The HTTP Message converters are created automatically by Spring. To perform
* additional configuration we use a bean post-processor.
*/
public class MvcConfiguringPostProcessor implements BeanPostProcessor {


 /**
 * Enable pretty print on any bean of type
 * {@link MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter} or
 * {@link MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter}.
 */
 public Object postProcessBeforeInitialization(Object bean, String name) throws BeansException 
 {
  if (bean instanceof HttpMessageConverter<?>)
  
  if (bean instanceof MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter) { 
   ((MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter) bean).setPrettyPrint(true);
  } 
  else if (bean instanceof MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter) {
   ((MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter) bean).setPrettyPrint(true);   
  }
 
  return bean;
 }

 public Object postProcessAfterInitialization(Object bean, String beanName) throws BeansException 
 {
  // Nothing to do
  return bean;
 }

}

7. Finally create a HTML view page

people.jsp

  
<%@ page language="java" contentType="text/html; charset=UTF-8"
    pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>
<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" prefix="c"%>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>Spring MVC Rest Demo</title>
</head>
<body>

<h2>Spring MVC Rest Demo</h2>

<table border="1">
<tr>
  <th>Id</th>
  <th>First Name</th>
  <th>Last Name</th>
</tr>
 <c:forEach var="row" varStatus="loop" items="${peopleList}">
      <tr>
  <td>${row.id}</td>
  <td>${row.firstName}</td>
  <td>${row.lastName}</td>
   </tr>
 </c:forEach>
</table>

<p />

Created by Pas Apicella

</body>
</html>

8. Run the application and access the 3 supported views with request mapping path of "/people"

HTML - http://localhost:8080/springmvc-rest/apples/people

JSON - http://localhost:8080/springmvc-rest/apples/people.json

XML - http://localhost:8080/springmvc-rest/apples/people.xml