Using Spring RESTTemplate to Post Objects to RESTful web services with Spring's Java Configuration (JavaConfig) style with Maven, JUnit, Log4J

In this example I am going to show you how to post data to a RESTful web service in Java using Spring, Spring Java Configuration and more

Web Service Code

Let's take a quick look at the Spring MVC Web Service code on the server:

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/api")
class JSonController
{

    private static final Logger logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(JSonController.class);



    @RequestMapping(value = "/{id}", method = RequestMethod.POST)
    @ResponseBody
    public User updateCustomer(@PathVariable("id") String id, @RequestBody User user) {

        logger.debug("I am in the controller and got ID: " + id.toString());
        logger.debug("I am in the controller and got user name: " + user.toString());

        return new User("NEW123", "NEW SMITH");
    }

As you can see from the code above the web service is goign to what for a ID and user object to be passed in and then its going to create a new User Object and send it back to the client.

Time For The Client Code

You can see from the client code below is that we are using Spring RESTTemaple and going to post an User Object to a web server and get one back.

@PropertySource("classpath:application.properties")
public class Main
{

    /**
     * Setting up logger
     */
    private static final Logger LOGGER = getLogger(Main.class);


    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException
    {
        LOGGER.debug("Starting REST Client!!!!");

        /**
         *
         * This is going to setup the REST server configuration in the applicationContext
         * you can see that I am using the new Spring's Java Configuration style and not some OLD XML file
         *
         */
        ApplicationContext context = new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(RESTConfiguration.class);

        /**
         *
         * We now get a RESTServer bean from the ApplicationContext which has all the data we need to
         * log into the REST service with.
         *
         */
        RESTServer mRESTServer = context.getBean(RESTServer.class);



        /**
         *
         * Setting up data to be sent to REST service
         *
         */
        Map<String, String> vars = new HashMap<String, String>();
        vars.put("id", "JS01");




        /**
         *
         * Doing the REST call and then displaying the data/user object
         *
         */


        try
        {

            /*

                This is code to post and return a user object

             */

            RestTemplate rt = new RestTemplate();
            rt.getMessageConverters().add(new MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter());
            rt.getMessageConverters().add(new StringHttpMessageConverter());

            String uri = new String("http://" + mRESTServer.getHost() + ":8080/springmvc-resttemplate-test/api/{id}");

            User u = new User();
            u.setName("Johnathan M Smith");
            u.setUser("JS01");


            User returns = rt.postForObject(uri, u, User.class, vars);
            LOGGER.debug("User:  " + u.toString());

        }
        catch (HttpClientErrorException e)
        {
            /**
             *
             * If we get a HTTP Exception display the error message
             */

            LOGGER.error("error:  " + e.getResponseBodyAsString());

            ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
            ErrorHolder eh = mapper.readValue(e.getResponseBodyAsString(), ErrorHolder.class);

            LOGGER.error("error:  " + eh.getErrorMessage());

        }
        catch(Exception e)
        {
            LOGGER.error("error:  " + e.getMessage());

        }
    }

}

You can see from the above code how easy it is to use RESTTeample to post data to a web service.

You can see how easy it is to use Spring's Java Configuration (JavaConfig) style and Not XML.. The time of using XML files with Springs is over...

We Can I Get The Sourcec Code

You can checkout the project from github.

git clone git@github.com:JohnathanMarkSmith/springmvc-resttemplate-test.git
cd springmvc-resttemplate-test.git

If you have any questions please email me at john@johnathanmarksmith.com