RESTEasy JAX-RS

The @Path annotation is not limited to simple path expressions. You also have the ability to insert regular expressions into @Path's value. For example:

@Path("/resources)
public class MyResource {

   @GET
   @Path("{var:.*}/stuff")
   public String get() {...}
}

The following GETs will route to the getResource() method:

GET /resources/stuff
GET /resources/foo/stuff
GET /resources/on/and/on/stuff

The format of the expression is:

"{" variable-name [ ":" regular-expression ] "}"

The regular-expression part is optional. When the expression is not provided, it defaults to a wildcard matching of one particular segment. In regular-expression terms, the expression defaults to

"([]*)"

For example:

@Path("/resources/{var}/stuff")

will match these:

GET /resources/foo/stuff
GET /resources/bar/stuff

but will not match:

GET /resources/a/bunch/of/stuff

There are a few more complicated uses of @PathParams not discussed in the previous section.

You are allowed to specify one or more path params embedded in one URI segment. Here are some examples:

1. @Path("/aaa{param}bbb")
2. @Path("/{name}-{zip}")
3. @Path("/foo{name}-{zip}bar")

So, a URI of "/aaa111bbb" would match #1. "/bill-02115" would match #2. "foobill-02115bar" would match #3.

We discussed before how you can use regular expression patterns within @Path values.

@GET
@Path("/aaa{param:b+}/{many:.*}/stuff")
public String getIt(@PathParam("param") String bs, @PathParam("many") String many) {...}

For the following requests, lets see what the values of the "param" and "many" @PathParams would be:

The specification has a very simple abstraction for examining a fragment of the URI path being invoked on javax.ws.rs.core.PathSegment:

public interface PathSegment {

    /**
     * Get the path segment.
     * <p>
     * @return the path segment
     */
    String getPath();
    /**
     * Get a map of the matrix parameters associated with the path segment
     * @return the map of matrix parameters
     */
    MultivaluedMap<String, String> getMatrixParameters();
    
}

You can have Resteasy inject a PathSegment instead of a value with your @PathParam.

   @GET
   @Path("/book/{id}")
   public String getBook(@PathParam("id") PathSegment id) {...}

This is very useful if you have a bunch of @PathParams that use matrix parameters. The idea of matrix parameters is that they are an arbitrary set of name-value pairs embedded in a uri path segment. The PathSegment object gives you access to these parameters. See also MatrixParam.

A matrix parameter example is:

GET http://host.com/library/book;name=EJB 3.0;author=Bill Burke

The basic idea of matrix parameters is that it represents resources that are addressable by their attributes as well as their raw id.

Some clients, like browsers, cannot use the Accept and Accept-Language headers to negotiation the representation's media type or language. RESTEasy allows you to map file name suffixes like (.xml, .txt, .en, .fr) to media types and languages. These file name suffixes take the place and override any Accept header sent by the client. You configure this using the resteasy.media.type.mappings and resteasy.language.mappings context-param variables within your web.xml

<web-app>
    <display-name>Archetype Created Web Application</display-name>
    <context-param>
        <param-name>resteasy.media.type.mappings</param-name>
        <param-value>html : text/html, json : application/json, xml : application/xml</param-value>
    </context-param>

   <context-param>
        <param-name>resteasy.language.mappings</param-name>
        <param-value>en : en-US, es : es, fr : fr</param-value>
   </context-param>

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>Resteasy</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.HttpServletDispatcher</servlet-class>
    </servlet>

    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>Resteasy</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

Mappings are a comma delimited list of suffix/mediatype or suffix/language mappings. Each mapping is delimited by a ':'. So, if you invoked GET /foo/bar.xml.en, this would be equivalent to invoking the following request:

GET /foo/bar
Accept: application/xml
Accept-Language: en-US

The mapped file suffixes are stripped from the target URL path before the request is dispatched to a corresponding JAX-RS resource.

RESTEasy can do content negotiation based in a parameter in query string. To enable this, the web.xml can be configured like follow:

<web-app>
    <display-name>Archetype Created Web Application</display-name>
    <context-param>
        <param-name>resteasy.media.type.param.mapping</param-name>
        <param-value>someName</param-value>
    </context-param>

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>Resteasy</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.HttpServletDispatcher</servlet-class>
    </servlet>

    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>Resteasy</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>
</web-app>

The param-value is the name of the query string parameter that RESTEasy will use in the place of the Accept header.

Invoking http://service.foo.com/resouce?someName=application/xml, will give the application/xml media type the highest priority in the content negotiation.

In cases where the request contains both the parameter and the Accept header, the parameter will be more relevant.

It is possible to left the param-value empty, what will cause the processor to look for a parameter named 'accept'.

Resteasy can automatically marshal and unmarshal a few different message bodies.

The JAX-RS specification allows you to plug in your own request/response body reader and writers. To do this, you annotate a class with @Provider and specify the @Produces types for a writer and @Consumes types for a reader. You must also implement a MessageBodyReader/Writer interface respectively. Here is an example.

The Resteasy ServletContextLoader will automatically scan your WEB-INF/lib and classes directories for classes annotated with @Provider or you can manually configure them in web.xml. See Installation/Configuration

javax.ws.rs.ext.Providers is a simple injectable interface that allows you to look up MessageBodyReaders, Writers, ContextResolvers, and ExceptionMappers. It is very useful, for instance, for implementing multipart providers. Content types that embed other random content types.

public interface Providers
{

   /**
    * Get a message body reader that matches a set of criteria. The set of
    * readers is first filtered by comparing the supplied value of
    * {@code mediaType} with the value of each reader's
    * {@link javax.ws.rs.Consumes}, ensuring the supplied value of
    * {@code type} is assignable to the generic type of the reader, and
    * eliminating those that do not match.
    * The list of matching readers is then ordered with those with the best
    * matching values of {@link javax.ws.rs.Consumes} (x/y > x/* > */*)
    * sorted first. Finally, the
    * {@link MessageBodyReader#isReadable}
    * method is called on each reader in order using the supplied criteria and
    * the first reader that returns {@code true} is selected and returned.
    *
    * @param type        the class of object that is to be written.
    * @param mediaType   the media type of the data that will be read.
    * @param genericType the type of object to be produced. E.g. if the
    *                    message body is to be converted into a method parameter, this will be
    *                    the formal type of the method parameter as returned by
    *                    <code>Class.getGenericParameterTypes</code>.
    * @param annotations an array of the annotations on the declaration of the
    *                    artifact that will be initialized with the produced instance. E.g. if the
    *                    message body is to be converted into a method parameter, this will be
    *                    the annotations on that parameter returned by
    *                    <code>Class.getParameterAnnotations</code>.
    * @return a MessageBodyReader that matches the supplied criteria or null
    *         if none is found.
    */
   <T> MessageBodyReader<T> getMessageBodyReader(Class<T> type,
                                                 Type genericType, Annotation annotations[], MediaType mediaType);

   /**
    * Get a message body writer that matches a set of criteria. The set of
    * writers is first filtered by comparing the supplied value of
    * {@code mediaType} with the value of each writer's
    * {@link javax.ws.rs.Produces}, ensuring the supplied value of
    * {@code type} is assignable to the generic type of the reader, and
    * eliminating those that do not match.
    * The list of matching writers is then ordered with those with the best
    * matching values of {@link javax.ws.rs.Produces} (x/y > x&#47;* > *&#47;*)
    * sorted first. Finally, the
    * {@link MessageBodyWriter#isWriteable}
    * method is called on each writer in order using the supplied criteria and
    * the first writer that returns {@code true} is selected and returned.
    *
    * @param mediaType   the media type of the data that will be written.
    * @param type        the class of object that is to be written.
    * @param genericType the type of object to be written. E.g. if the
    *                    message body is to be produced from a field, this will be
    *                    the declared type of the field as returned by
    *                    <code>Field.getGenericType</code>.
    * @param annotations an array of the annotations on the declaration of the
    *                    artifact that will be written. E.g. if the
    *                    message body is to be produced from a field, this will be
    *                    the annotations on that field returned by
    *                    <code>Field.getDeclaredAnnotations</code>.
    * @return a MessageBodyReader that matches the supplied criteria or null
    *         if none is found.
    */
   <T> MessageBodyWriter<T> getMessageBodyWriter(Class<T> type,
                                                 Type genericType, Annotation annotations[], MediaType mediaType);

   /**
    * Get an exception mapping provider for a particular class of exception.
    * Returns the provider whose generic type is the nearest superclass of
    * {@code type}.
    *
    * @param type the class of exception
    * @return an {@link ExceptionMapper} for the supplied type or null if none
    *         is found.
    */
   <T extends Throwable> ExceptionMapper<T> getExceptionMapper(Class<T> type);

   /**
    * Get a context resolver for a particular type of context and media type.
    * The set of resolvers is first filtered by comparing the supplied value of
    * {@code mediaType} with the value of each resolver's
    * {@link javax.ws.rs.Produces}, ensuring the generic type of the context
    * resolver is assignable to the supplied value of {@code contextType}, and
    * eliminating those that do not match. If only one resolver matches the
    * criteria then it is returned. If more than one resolver matches then the
    * list of matching resolvers is ordered with those with the best
    * matching values of {@link javax.ws.rs.Produces} (x/y > x&#47;* > *&#47;*)
    * sorted first. A proxy is returned that delegates calls to
    * {@link ContextResolver#getContext(java.lang.Class)} to each matching context
    * resolver in order and returns the first non-null value it obtains or null
    * if all matching context resolvers return null.
    *
    * @param contextType the class of context desired
    * @param mediaType   the media type of data for which a context is required.
    * @return a matching context resolver instance or null if no matching
    *         context providers are found.
    */
   <T> ContextResolver<T> getContextResolver(Class<T> contextType,
                                             MediaType mediaType);
}

         

A Providers instance is injectable into MessageBodyReader or Writers:

            @Provider
            @Consumes("multipart/fixed")
            public class MultipartProvider implements MessageBodyReader {

            private @Context Providers providers;

            ...

            }
         

Resteasy's JAXB providers have a pluggable way to decorate Marshaller and Unmarshaller instances. The way it works is that you can write an annotation that can trigger the decoration of a Marshaller or Unmarshaller. Your decorators can do things like set Marshaller or Unmarshaller properties, set up validation, stuff like that. Here's an example. Let's say we want to have an annotation that will trigger pretty-printing, nice formatting, of an XML document. If we were doing raw JAXB, we would set a property on the Marshaller of Marshaller.JAXB_FORMATTED_OUTPUT. Let's write a Marshaller decorator.

First we define a annotation:

 import org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.Decorator;

 @Target({ElementType.TYPE, ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.PARAMETER, ElementType.FIELD})
 @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
 @Decorator(processor = PrettyProcessor.class, target = Marshaller.class)
 public @interface Pretty {}
 

To get this to work, we must annotate our @Pretty annotation with a meta-annotation called @Decorator. The target() attribute must be the JAXB Marshaller class. The processor() attribute is a class we will write next.

 
 import org.jboss.resteasy.core.interception.DecoratorProcessor;
 import org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.DecorateTypes;

 import javax.xml.bind.Marshaller;
 import javax.xml.bind.PropertyException;
 import javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType;
 import javax.ws.rs.Produces;
 import java.lang.annotation.Annotation;

 /**
  * @author <a href="mailto:bill@burkecentral.com">Bill Burke</a>
  * @version $Revision: 1 $
  */
 @DecorateTypes({"text/*+xml", "application/*+xml"})
 public class PrettyProcessor implements DecoratorProcessor<Marshaller, Pretty>
 {
    public Marshaller decorate(Marshaller target, Pretty annotation,
                  Class type, Annotation[] annotations, MediaType mediaType)
    {
       target.setProperty(Marshaller.JAXB_FORMATTED_OUTPUT, Boolean.TRUE);
    }
 }
 
 

The processor implementation must implement the DecoratorProcessor interface and should also be annotated with @DecorateTypes. This annotation specifies what media types the processor can be used with. Now that we've defined our annotation and our Processor, we can use it on our JAX-RS resource methods or JAXB types as follows:

   @GET
   @Pretty
   @Produces("application/xml")
   public SomeJAXBObject get() {...}
 

If you are confused, check the Resteasy source code for the implementation of @XmlHeader

You should not use this feature unless you know what you're doing.

Based on the class you are marshalling/unmarshalling, RESTEasy will, by default create and cache JAXBContext instances per class type. If you do not want RESTEasy to create JAXBContexts, you can plug-in your own by implementing an instance of javax.ws.rs.ext.ContextResolver

 public interface ContextResolver<T>
 {
T getContext(Class<?> type);
 }

 @Provider
 @Produces("application/xml")
 public class MyJAXBContextResolver implements ContextResolver<JAXBContext>
 {
JAXBContext getContext(Class<?> type)
{
   if (type.equals(WhateverClassIsOverridedFor.class)) return JAXBContext.newInstance()...;
}
 }
         

You must provide a @Produces annotation to specify the media type the context is meant for. You must also make sure to implement ContextResolver<JAXBContext>. This helps the runtime match to the correct context resolver. You must also annotate the ContextResolver class with @Provider.

There are multiple ways to make this ContextResolver available.

Resteasy is required to provide JAXB provider support for XML. It has a few extra annotations that can help code your app.

RESTEasy allows you to marshall JAXB annotated POJOs to and from JSON. This provider wraps the Jettison JSON library to accomplish this. You can obtain more information about Jettison and how it works from:

http://jettison.codehaus.org/

To use this integration with Jettision you need to import the resteasy-jettison-provider Maven module. Older versions of RESTEasy used to include this within the resteasy-jaxb-provider but we decided to modularize it more.

Jettison has two mapping formats. One is BadgerFish the other is a Jettison Mapped Convention format. The Mapped Convention is the default mapping.

For example, consider this JAXB class:

 @XmlRootElement(name = "book")
 public class Book
 {
private String author;
private String ISBN;
private String title;

public Book()
{
}

public Book(String author, String ISBN, String title)
{
   this.author = author;
   this.ISBN = ISBN;
   this.title = title;
}

@XmlElement
public String getAuthor()
{
   return author;
}

public void setAuthor(String author)
{
   this.author = author;
}

@XmlElement
public String getISBN()
{
   return ISBN;
}

public void setISBN(String ISBN)
{
   this.ISBN = ISBN;
}

@XmlAttribute
public String getTitle()
{
   return title;
}

public void setTitle(String title)
{
   this.title = title;
}
 }
         

This is how the JAXB Book class would be marshalled to JSON using the BadgerFish Convention

 {"book":
    {
       "@title":"EJB 3.0",
       "author":{"$":"Bill Burke"},
       "ISBN":{"$":"596529260"}
    }
 }
 

Notice that element values have a map associated with them and to get to the value of the element, you must access the "$" variable. Here's an example of accessing the book in Javascript:

 var data = eval("(" + xhr.responseText + ")");
 document.getElementById("zone").innerHTML = data.book.@title;
 document.getElementById("zone").innerHTML += data.book.author.$;
 

To use the BadgerFish Convention you must use the @org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.jaxb.json.BadgerFish annotation on the JAXB class you are marshalling/unmarshalling, or, on the JAX-RS resource method or parameter:

 @BadgerFish
 @XmlRootElement(name = "book")
 public class Book {...}
 

If you are returning a book on the JAX-RS method and you don't want to (or can't) pollute your JAXB classes with RESTEasy annotations, add the annotation to the JAX-RS method:

 @BadgerFish
 @GET
 public Book getBook(...) {...}
 

If a Book is your input then you put it on the parameter:

 @POST
 public void newBook(@BadgerFish Book book) {...}
 

The default Jettison Mapped Convention would return JSON that looked like this:

 { "book" :
      {
         "@title":"EJB 3.0",
         "author":"Bill Burke",
         "ISBN":596529260
       }
 }
 

Notice that the @XmlAttribute "title" is prefixed with the '@' character. Unlike BadgerFish, the '$' does not represent the value of element text. This format is a bit simpler than the BadgerFish convention which is why it was chose as a default. Here's an example of accessing this in Javascript:

 var data = eval("(" + xhr.responseText + ")");
 document.getElementById("zone").innerHTML = data.book.@title;
 document.getElementById("zone").innerHTML += data.book.author;
 

The Mapped Convention allows you to fine tune the JAXB mapping using the @org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.jaxb.json.Mapped annotation. You can provide an XML Namespace to JSON namespace mapping. For example, if you defined your JAXB namespace within your package-info.java class like this:

 @javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlSchema(namespace="http://jboss.org/books")
 package org.jboss.resteasy.test.books;
 

You would have to define a JSON to XML namespace mapping or you would receive an exception of something like this:

 java.lang.IllegalStateException: Invalid JSON namespace: http://jboss.org/books
 at org.codehaus.jettison.mapped.MappedNamespaceConvention.getJSONNamespace(MappedNamespaceConvention.java:151)
 at org.codehaus.jettison.mapped.MappedNamespaceConvention.createKey(MappedNamespaceConvention.java:158)
 at org.codehaus.jettison.mapped.MappedXMLStreamWriter.writeStartElement(MappedXMLStreamWriter.java:241)
 

To fix this problem you need another annotation, @Mapped. You use the @Mapped annotation on your JAXB classes, on your JAX-RS resource method, or on the parameter you are unmarshalling

 import org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.jaxb.json.Mapped;
 import org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.jaxb.json.XmlNsMap;

 ...

@GET
@Produces("application/json")
@Mapped(namespaceMap = {
        @XmlNsMap(namespace = "http://jboss.org/books", jsonName = "books")
})
public Book get() {...}

 

Besides mapping XML to JSON namespaces, you can also force @XmlAttribute's to be marshaled as XMLElements.

            @Mapped(attributeAsElements={"title"})
            @XmlRootElement(name = "book")
            public class Book {...}
         

If you are returning a book on the JAX-RS method and you don't want to (or can't) pollute your JAXB classes with RESTEasy annotations, add the annotation to the JAX-RS method:

            @Mapped(attributeAsElements={"title"})
            @GET
            public Book getBook(...) {...}
         

If a Book is your input then you put it on the parameter:

 @POST
 public void newBook(@Mapped(attributeAsElements={"title"}) Book book) {...}
 

RESTEasy supports the FastinfoSet mime type with JAXB annotated classes. Fast infoset documents are faster to serialize and parse, and smaller in size, than logically equivalent XML documents. Thus, fast infoset documents may be used whenever the size and processing time of XML documents is an issue. It is configured the same way the XML JAXB provider is so really no other documentation is needed here.

To use this integration with Fastinfoset you need to import the resteasy-fastinfoset-provider Maven module. Older versions of RESTEasy used to include this within the resteasy-jaxb-provider but we decided to modularize it more.

RESTEasy will automatically marshal arrays, java.util.Set's, and java.util.List's of JAXB objects to and from XML, JSON, Fastinfoset (or any other new JAXB mapper Restasy comes up with).

 @XmlRootElement(name = "customer")
 @XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)
 public class Customer
 {
@XmlElement
private String name;

public Customer()
{
}

public Customer(String name)
{
   this.name = name;
}

public String getName()
{
   return name;
}
 }

 @Path("/")
 public class MyResource
 {
   @PUT
   @Path("array")
   @Consumes("application/xml")
   public void putCustomers(Customer[] customers)
   {
      Assert.assertEquals("bill", customers[0].getName());
      Assert.assertEquals("monica", customers[1].getName());
   }

   @GET
   @Path("set")
   @Produces("application/xml")
   public Set<Customer> getCustomerSet()
   {
      HashSet<Customer> set = new HashSet<Customer>();
      set.add(new Customer("bill"));
      set.add(new Customer("monica"));

      return set;
   }


   @PUT
   @Path("list")
   @Consumes("application/xml")
   public void putCustomers(List<Customer> customers)
   {
      Assert.assertEquals("bill", customers.get(0).getName());
      Assert.assertEquals("monica", customers.get(1).getName());
   }
 }
 
 

The above resource can publish and receive JAXB objects. It is assumed that are wrapped in a collection element

 <collection>
<customer><name>bill</name></customer>
<customer><name>monica</name></customer>
 <collection>
 
 

You can change the namespace URI, namespace tag, and collection element name by using the @org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.jaxb.Wrapped annotation on a parameter or method

 @Target({ElementType.PARAMETER, ElementType.METHOD})
 @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
 public @interface Wrapped
 {
String element() default "collection";

String namespace() default "http://jboss.org/resteasy";

String prefix() default "resteasy";
 }
 

So, if we wanted to output this XML

 <foo:list xmlns:foo="http://foo.org">
<customer><name>bill</name></customer>
<customer><name>monica</name></customer>
 </foo:list>
 
 

We would use the @Wrapped annotation as follows:

   @GET
   @Path("list")
   @Produces("application/xml")
   @Wrapped(element="list", namespace="http://foo.org", prefix="foo")
   public List<Customer> getCustomerSet()
   {
      List<Customer> list = new ArrayList<Customer>();
      list.add(new Customer("bill"));
      list.add(new Customer("monica"));

      return list;
   }
 
 

RESTEasy will automatically marshal maps of JAXB objects to and from XML, JSON, Fastinfoset (or any other new JAXB mapper Restasy comes up with). Your parameter or method return type must be a generic with a String as the key and the JAXB object's type.

@XmlRootElement(namespace = "http://foo.com")
public static class Foo
{
   @XmlAttribute
   private String name;

   public Foo()
   {
   }

   public Foo(String name)
   {
      this.name = name;
   }

   public String getName()
   {
      return name;
   }
}

@Path("/map")
public static class MyResource
{
   @POST
   @Produces("application/xml")
   @Consumes("application/xml")
   public Map<String, Foo> post(Map<String, Foo> map)
   {
      Assert.assertEquals(2, map.size());
      Assert.assertNotNull(map.get("bill"));
      Assert.assertNotNull(map.get("monica"));
      Assert.assertEquals(map.get("bill").getName(), "bill");
      Assert.assertEquals(map.get("monica").getName(), "monica");
      return map;
   }
 }
 
 

The above resource can publish and receive JAXB objects within a map. By default, they are wrapped in a "map" element in the default namespace. Also, each "map" element has zero or more "entry" elements with a "key" attribute.

 <map>
<entry key="bill" xmlns="http://foo.com">
    <foo name="bill"/>
</entry>
<entry key="monica" xmlns="http://foo.com">
    <foo name="monica"/>
</entry>
 </map>
 
 

You can change the namespace URI, namespace prefix and map, entry, and key element and attribute names by using the @org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.jaxb.WrappedMap annotation on a parameter or method

 @Target({ElementType.PARAMETER, ElementType.METHOD})
 @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
 public @interface WrappedMap
 {
/**
 * map element name
 */
String map() default "map";

/**
 * entry element name *
 */
String entry() default "entry";

/**
 * entry's key attribute name
 */
String key() default "key";

String namespace() default "";

String prefix() default "";
 }
 

So, if we wanted to output this XML

 <hashmap>
<hashentry hashkey="bill" xmlns:foo="http://foo.com">
    <foo:foo name="bill"/>
</hashentry>
 </map>
 
 

We would use the @WrappedMap annotation as follows:

@Path("/map")
public static class MyResource
{
   @GET
   @Produces("application/xml")
   @WrappedMap(map="hashmap", entry="hashentry", key="hashkey")
   public Map<String, Foo> get()
   {
      ...
      return map;
   }
 
 

Some objects models use abstract classes and interfaces heavily. Unfortunately, JAXB doesn't work with interfaces that are root elements and RESTEasy can't unmarshal parameters that are interfaces or raw abstract classes because it doesn't have enough information to create a JAXBContext. For example:

 public interface IFoo {}

 @XmlRootElement
 public class RealFoo implements IFoo {}

 @Path("/jaxb")
 public class MyResource {

@PUT
@Consumes("application/xml")
public void put(IFoo foo) {...}
 }
 

In this example, you would get an error from RESTEasy of something like "Cannot find a MessageBodyReader for...". This is because RESTEasy does not know that implementations of IFoo are JAXB classes and doesn't know how to create a JAXBContext for it. As a workaround, RESTEasy allows you to use the JAXB annotation @XmlSeeAlso on the interface to correct the problem. (NOTE, this will not work with manual, hand-coded JAXB).

 @XmlSeeAlso(RealFoo.class)
 public interface IFoo {}
 

The extra @XmlSeeAlso on IFoo allows RESTEasy to create a JAXBContext that knows how to unmarshal RealFoo instances.

RESTEasy has defined a simple object model in Java to represent Atom and uses JAXB to marshal and unmarshal it. The main classes are in the org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.atom package and are Feed, Entry, Content, and Link. If you look at the source, you'd see that these are annotated with JAXB annotations. The distribution contains the javadocs for this project and are a must to learn the model. Here is a simple example of sending an atom feed using the Resteasy API.

import org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.atom.Content;
import org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.atom.Entry;
import org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.atom.Feed;
import org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.atom.Link;
import org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.atom.Person;

@Path("atom")
public class MyAtomService
{

   @GET
   @Path("feed")
   @Produces("application/atom+xml")
   public Feed getFeed() throws URISyntaxException
   {
      Feed feed = new Feed();
      feed.setId(new URI("http://example.com/42"));
      feed.setTitle("My Feed");
      feed.setUpdated(new Date());
      Link link = new Link();
      link.setHref(new URI("http://localhost"));
      link.setRel("edit");
      feed.getLinks().add(link);
      feed.getAuthors().add(new Person("Bill Burke"));
      Entry entry = new Entry();
      entry.setTitle("Hello World");
      Content content = new Content();
      content.setType(MediaType.TEXT_HTML_TYPE);
      content.setText("Nothing much");
      entry.setContent(content);
      feed.getEntries().add(entry);
      return feed;
   }
}

      

Because Resteasy's atom provider is JAXB based, you are not limited to sending atom objects using XML. You can automatically re-use all the other JAXB providers that Resteasy has like JSON and fastinfoset. All you have to do is have "atom+" in front of the main subtype. i.e. @Produces("application/atom+json") or @Consumes("application/atom+fastinfoset")

The org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.atom.Content class allows you to unmarshal and marshal JAXB annotated objects that are the body of the content. Here's an example of sending an Entry with a Customer object attached as the body of the entry's content.

@XmlRootElement(namespace = "http://jboss.org/Customer")
@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)
public class Customer
{
   @XmlElement
   private String name;

   public Customer()
   {
   }

   public Customer(String name)
   {
      this.name = name;
   }

   public String getName()
   {
      return name;
   }
}

@Path("atom")
public static class AtomServer
{
   @GET
   @Path("entry")
   @Produces("application/atom+xml")
   public Entry getEntry()
   {
      Entry entry = new Entry();
      entry.setTitle("Hello World");
      Content content = new Content();
      content.setJAXBObject(new Customer("bill"));
      entry.setContent(content);
      return entry;
   }
}

The Content.setJAXBObject() method is used to tell the content object you are sending back a Java JAXB object and want it marshalled appropriately. If you are using a different base format other than XML, i.e. "application/atom+json", this attached JAXB object will be marshalled into that same format.

If you have an atom document as your input, you can also extract JAXB objects from Content using the Content.getJAXBObject(Class clazz) method. Here is an example of an input atom document and extracting a Customer object from the content.

@Path("atom")
public static class AtomServer
{
   @PUT
   @Path("entry")
   @Produces("application/atom+xml")
   public void putCustomer(Entry entry)
   {
      Content content = entry.getContent();
      Customer cust = content.getJAXBObject(Customer.class);
   }
}

If you're deploying Resteasy outside of JBoss AS7 add the resteasy jackson provder to your WAR pom.xml build

    <dependency>
       <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
       <artifactId>resteasy-jackson-provider</artifactId>
       <version>3.0.9.Final</version>
    </dependency>
 

If you're deploying Resteasy with JBoss AS7, there's nothing you need to do except to make sure you've updated your AS7 distribution with the latest and greatest Resteasy. See the installation sectio of this documentation for more details.

If you're deploying Resteasy outside of JBoss AS7 add the resteasy jackson provder to your WAR pom.xml build

    <dependency>
       <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
       <artifactId>resteasy-jackson2-provider</artifactId>
       <version>3.0.9.Final</version>
    </dependency>
 

If you want to use Jackson 2.2.x inside of JBoss AS7 you'll have to create a jboss-deployment-structure.xml file within your WEB-INF directory. By default AS7 includes the Jackson 1.9.x JAX-RS integration, so you'll want to exclude it from your dependencies, and add the jackson2 ones.

<jboss-deployment-structure>
    <deployment>
        <exclusions>
           <module name="org.jboss.resteasy.resteasy-jackson-provider"/>
        </exclusions>
        <dependencies>
            <module name="org.jboss.resteasy.resteasy-jackson2-provider" services="import"/>
        </dependencies>
    </deployment>
</jboss-deployment-structure> 

The first extra piece that Resteasy added to the integration was to support "application/*+json". Jackson would only accept "application/json" and "text/json" as valid media types. This allows you to create json-based media types and still let Jackson marshal things for you. For example:

        
@Path("/customers")
public class MyService {

   @GET
   @Produces("application/vnd.customer+json")
   public Customer[] getCustomers() {}
}

    

Another problem that occurs is when you are using the Resteasy JAXB providers alongside Jackson. You may want to use Jettison and JAXB to output your JSON instead of Jackson. In this case, you must either not install the Jackson provider, or use the annotation @org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.NoJackson on your JAXB annotated classes. For example:

        

    @XmlRootElement
    @NoJackson
    public class Customer {...}

    @Path("/customers")
    public class MyService {

       @GET
       @Produces("application/vnd.customer+json")
       public Customer[] getCustomers() {}
    }
    
    

If you can't annotate the JAXB class with @NoJackson, then you can use the annotation on a method parameter. For example:

        

        @XmlRootElement
        public class Customer {...}

        @Path("/customers")
        public class MyService {

           @GET
           @Produces("application/vnd.customer+json")
           @NoJackson
           public Customer[] getCustomers() {}

           @POST
           @Consumes("application/vnd.customer+json")
           public void createCustomer(@NoJackson Customer[] customers) {...}
        }
        
    

If your Jackson classes are annotated with JAXB annotations and you have the resteasy-jaxb-provider in your classpath, you may trigger the Jettision JAXB marshalling code. To turn off the JAXB json marshaller use the @org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.jaxb.IgnoreMediaTypes("application/*+json") on your classes.

If you are using the Jackson 2.2.x provider, Resteasy has provided a pretty-printing annotation simliar with the one in JAXB provider:

org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.jackson.Formatted

Here is an example:

@GET
@Produces("application/json")
@Path("/formatted/{id}")
@Formatted
public Product getFormattedProduct()
{
    return new Product(333, "robot");
}

As the example shown above, the @Formatted annotation will enable the underlying Jackson option "SerializationFeature.INDENT_OUTPUT".

When writing a JAX-RS service, RESTEasy provides an interface that allows you to read in any multipart mime type. org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.multipart.MultipartInput

package org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.multipart;

public interface MultipartInput
{
   List<InputPart> getParts();

   String getPreamble();

   // You must call close to delete any temporary files created
   // Otherwise they will be deleted on garbage collection or on JVM exit
   void close();
}

public interface InputPart
{
   MultivaluedMap<String, String> getHeaders();

   String getBodyAsString();

   <T> T getBody(Class<T> type, Type genericType) throws IOException;

   <T> T getBody(org.jboss.resteasy.util.GenericType<T> type) throws IOException;

   MediaType getMediaType();

   boolean isContentTypeFromMessage();
}
      

MultipartInput is a simple interface that allows you to get access to each part of the multipart message. Each part is represented by an InputPart interface. Each part has a set of headers associated with it You can unmarshall the part by calling one of the getBody() methods. The Type genericType parameter can be null, but the Class type parameter must be set. Resteasy will find a MessageBodyReader based on the media type of the part as well as the type information you pass in. The following piece of code is unmarshalling parts which are XML into a JAXB annotated class called Customer.

   @Path("/multipart")
   public class MyService
   {
      @PUT
      @Consumes("multipart/mixed")
      public void put(MultipartInput input)
      {
         List<Customer> customers = new ArrayList...;
         for (InputPart part : input.getParts())
         {
            Customer cust = part.getBody(Customer.class, null);
            customers.add(cust);
         }
         input.close();
      }
   }

Sometimes you may want to unmarshall a body part that is sensitive to generic type metadata. In this case you can use the org.jboss.resteasy.util.GenericType class. Here's an example of unmarshalling a type that is sensitive to generic type metadata.

   @Path("/multipart")
   public class MyService
   {
      @PUT
      @Consumes("multipart/mixed")
      public void put(MultipartInput input)
      {
         for (InputPart part : input.getParts())
         {
            List<Customer> cust = part.getBody(new GenericType>List>Customer<<() {});
         }
         input.close();
      }
   }

Use of GenericType is required because it is really the only way to obtain generic type information at runtime.

If your body parts are uniform, you do not have to manually unmarshall each and every part. You can just provide a java.util.List as your input parameter. It must have the type it is unmarshalling with the generic parameter of the List type declaration. Here's an example again of unmarshalling a list of customers.

   @Path("/multipart")
   public class MyService
   {
      @PUT
      @Consumes("multipart/mixed")
      public void put(List<Customer> customers)
      {
         ...
      }
   }

When writing a JAX-RS service, RESTEasy provides an interface that allows you to read in multipart/form-data mime type. "multipart/form-data" is often found in web application HTML Form documents and is generally used to upload files. The form-data format is the same as other multipart formats, except that each inlined piece of content has a name associated with it. The interface used for form-data input is org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.multipart.MultipartFormDataInput

public interface MultipartFormDataInput extends MultipartInput
{
   @Deprecated
   Map<String, InputPart> getFormData();

   Map<String, List<InputPart>> getFormDataMap();

   <T> T getFormDataPart(String key, Class<T> rawType, Type genericType) throws IOException;

   <T> T getFormDataPart(String key, GenericType<T> type) throws IOException;
}

It works in much the same way as MultipartInput described earlier in this chapter.

With form-data, if your body parts are uniform, you do not have to manually unmarshall each and every part. You can just provide a java.util.Map as your input parameter. It must have the type it is unmarshalling with the generic parameter of the List type declaration. Here's an example of of unmarshalling a Map of Customer objects which are JAXB annotated classes.

   @Path("/multipart")
   public class MyService
   {
      @PUT
      @Consumes("multipart/form-data")
      public void put(Map<String, Customer> customers)
      {
         ...
      }
   }

When writing a JAX-RS service, RESTEasy provides an interface that allows you to read in multipart/related mime type. A multipart/related is used to indicate that message parts should not be considered individually but rather as parts of an aggregate whole. One example usage for multipart/related is to send a web page complete with images in a single message. Every multipart/related message has a root/start part that references the other parts of the message. The parts are identified by their "Content-ID" headers. multipart/related is defined by RFC 2387. The interface used for related input is org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.multipart.MultipartRelatedInput

public interface MultipartRelatedInput extends MultipartInput
{
   String getType();

   String getStart();

   String getStartInfo();

   InputPart getRootPart();

   Map<String, InputPart> getRelatedMap();
}

It works in much the same way as MultipartInput described earlier in this chapter.

RESTEasy provides a simple API to output multipart data.

package org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.multipart;

public class MultipartOutput
{
   public OutputPart addPart(Object entity, MediaType mediaType)

   public OutputPart addPart(Object entity, GenericType type, MediaType mediaType)

   public OutputPart addPart(Object entity, Class type, Type genericType, MediaType mediaType)

   public List<OutputPart> getParts()

   public String getBoundary()

   public void setBoundary(String boundary)
}

public class OutputPart
{
   public MultivaluedMap<String, Object> getHeaders()

   public Object getEntity()

   public Class getType()

   public Type getGenericType()

   public MediaType getMediaType()
}

When you want to output multipart data it is as simple as creating a MultipartOutput object and calling addPart() methods. Resteasy will automatically find a MessageBodyWriter to marshall your entity objects. Like MultipartInput, sometimes you may have marshalling which is sensitive to generic type metadata. In that case, use GenericType. Most of the time though passing in an Object and its MediaType is enough. In the example below, we are sending back a "multipart/mixed" format back to the calling client. The parts are Customer objects which are JAXB annotated and will be marshalling into "application/xml".

   @Path("/multipart")
   public class MyService
   {
      @GET
      @Produces("multipart/mixed")
      public MultipartOutput get()
      {
         MultipartOutput output = new MultipartOutput();
         output.addPart(new Customer("bill"), MediaType.APPLICATION_XML_TYPE);
         output.addPart(new Customer("monica"), MediaType.APPLICATION_XML_TYPE);
         return output;
      }

If your body parts are uniform, you do not have to manually marshall each and every part or even use a MultipartOutput object.. You can just provide a java.util.List. It must have the generic type it is marshalling with the generic parameter of the List type declaration. You must also annotate the method with the @PartType annotation to specify what media type each part is. Here's an example of sending back a list of customers back to a client. The customers are JAXB objects

   @Path("/multipart")
   public class MyService
   {
      @GET
      @Produces("multipart/mixed")
      @PartType("application/xml")
      public List<Customer> get()
      {
         ...
      }
   }

RESTEasy provides a simple API to output multipart/form-data.

package org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.multipart;

public class MultipartFormDataOutput extends MultipartOutput
{
   public OutputPart addFormData(String key, Object entity, MediaType mediaType)

   public OutputPart addFormData(String key, Object entity, GenericType type, MediaType mediaType)

   public OutputPart addFormData(String key, Object entity, Class type, Type genericType, MediaType mediaType)

   public Map<String, OutputPart> getFormData()
}

When you want to output multipart/form-data it is as simple as creating a MultipartFormDataOutput object and calling addFormData() methods. Resteasy will automatically find a MessageBodyWriter to marshall your entity objects. Like MultipartInput, sometimes you may have marshalling which is sensitive to generic type metadata. In that case, use GenericType. Most of the time though passing in an Object and its MediaType is enough. In the example below, we are sending back a "multipart/form-data" format back to the calling client. The parts are Customer objects which are JAXB annotated and will be marshalling into "application/xml".

   @Path("/form")
   public class MyService
   {
      @GET
      @Produces("multipart/form-data")
      public MultipartFormDataOutput get()
      {
         MultipartFormDataOutput output = new MultipartFormDataOutput();
         output.addPart("bill", new Customer("bill"), MediaType.APPLICATION_XML_TYPE);
         output.addPart("monica", new Customer("monica"), MediaType.APPLICATION_XML_TYPE);
         return output;
      }

If your body parts are uniform, you do not have to manually marshall each and every part or even use a MultipartFormDataOutput object.. You can just provide a java.util.Map. It must have the generic type it is marshalling with the generic parameter of the Map type declaration. You must also annotate the method with the @PartType annotation to specify what media type each part is. Here's an example of sending back a list of customers back to a client. The customers are JAXB objects

   @Path("/multipart")
   public class MyService
   {
      @GET
      @Produces("multipart/form-data")
      @PartType("application/xml")
      public Map<String, Customer> get()
      {
         ...
      }
   }

RESTEasy provides a simple API to output multipart/related.

package org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.multipart;

public class MultipartRelatedOutput extends MultipartOutput
{
   public OutputPart getRootPart()

   public OutputPart addPart(Object entity, MediaType mediaType,
      String contentId, String contentTransferEncoding)

   public String getStartInfo()

   public void setStartInfo(String startInfo)
}

When you want to output multipart/related it is as simple as creating a MultipartRelatedOutput object and calling addPart() methods. The first added part will be used as the root part of the multipart/related message. Resteasy will automatically find a MessageBodyWriter to marshall your entity objects. Like MultipartInput, sometimes you may have marshalling which is sensitive to generic type metadata. In that case, use GenericType. Most of the time though passing in an Object and its MediaType is enough. In the example below, we are sending back a "multipart/related" format back to the calling client. We are sending a html with 2 images.

@Path("/related")
public class MyService
{
   @GET
   @Produces("multipart/related")
   public MultipartRelatedOutput get()
   {
      MultipartRelatedOutput output = new MultipartRelatedOutput();
      output.setStartInfo("text/html");

      Map<String, String> mediaTypeParameters = new LinkedHashMap<String, String>();
      mediaTypeParameters.put("charset", "UTF-8");
      mediaTypeParameters.put("type", "text/html");
      output
         .addPart(
            "<html><body>\n"
            + "This is me: <img src='cid:http://example.org/me.png' />\n"
            + "<br />This is you: <img src='cid:http://example.org/you.png' />\n"
            + "</body></html>",
            new MediaType("text", "html", mediaTypeParameters),
            "<mymessage.xml@example.org>", "8bit");
      output.addPart("// binary octets for me png",
            new MediaType("image", "png"), "<http://example.org/me.png>",
            "binary");
      output.addPart("// binary octets for you png", new MediaType(
            "image", "png"),
            "<http://example.org/you.png>", "binary");
      client.putRelated(output);
      return output;
   }
}

If you have a exact knowledge of your multipart/form-data packets, you can map them to and from a POJO class to and from multipart/form-data using the @org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.multipart.MultipartForm annotation and the JAX-RS @FormParam annotation. You simple define a POJO with at least a default constructor and annotate its fields and/or properties with @FormParams. These @FormParams must also be annotated with @org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.multipart.PartType if you are doing output. For example:

   public class CustomerProblemForm {
      @FormParam("customer")
      @PartType("application/xml")
      private Customer customer;

      @FormParam("problem")
      @PartType("text/plain")
      private String problem;

      public Customer getCustomer() { return customer; }
      public void setCustomer(Customer cust) { this.customer = cust; }
      public String getProblem() { return problem; }
      public void setProblem(String problem) { this.problem = problem; }
   }

After defining your POJO class you can then use it to represent multipart/form-data. Here's an example of sending a CustomerProblemForm using the RESTEasy client framework

   @Path("portal")
   public interface CustomerPortal {

      @Path("issues/{id}")
      @Consumes("multipart/form-data")
      @PUT
      public void putProblem(@MultipartForm CustomerProblemForm,
                             @PathParam("id") int id);
   }

   {
       CustomerPortal portal = ProxyFactory.create(CustomerPortal.class, "http://example.com");
       CustomerProblemForm form = new CustomerProblemForm();
       form.setCustomer(...);
       form.setProblem(...);

       portal.putProblem(form, 333);
   }

You see that the @MultipartForm annotation was used to tell RESTEasy that the object has @FormParam and that it should be marshalled from that. You can also use the same object to receive multipart data. Here is an example of the server side counterpart of our customer portal.

   @Path("portal")
   public class CustomerPortalServer {

      @Path("issues/{id})
      @Consumes("multipart/form-data")
      @PUT
      public void putIssue(@MultipartForm CustoemrProblemForm,
                           @PathParam("id") int id) {
         ... write to database...
      }
   }

There are a lot of frameworks doing multipart parsing automatically with the help of filters and interceptors. Like org.jboss.seam.web.MultipartFilter in Seam or org.springframework.web.multipart.MultipartResolver in Spring. However the incoming multipart request stream can be parsed only once. Resteasy users working with multipart should make sure that nothing parses the stream before Resteasy gets it.

By default if no Content-Type header is present in a part, "text/plain; charset=us-ascii" is used as fallback. This is the value defined by the MIME RFC. However for example some web clients (like most, if not all, web browsers) do not send Content-Type headers for all fields in a multipart/form-data request (only for the file parts). This can cause character encoding and unmarshalling errors on the server side. To correct this there is an option to define an other, non-rfc compliant fallback value. This can be done dynamically per request with the PreProcessInterceptor infrastructure of RESTEasy. In the following example we will set "*/*; charset=UTF-8" as the new default fallback:

import org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.multipart.InputPart;

@Provider
@ServerInterceptor
public class ContentTypeSetterPreProcessorInterceptor implements
		PreProcessInterceptor {

	public ServerResponse preProcess(HttpRequest request,
			ResourceMethod method) throws Failure, WebApplicationException {
		request.setAttribute(InputPart.DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE_PROPERTY,
				"*/*; charset=UTF-8");
		return null;
	}

}

Using an interceptor and the InputPart.DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE_PROPERTY attribute allows setting a default Content-Type, but it is also possible to override the Content-Type, if any, in any input part by calling org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.multipart.InputPart.setMediaType(). For example:

@POST
@Path("query")
@Consumes(MediaType.MULTIPART_FORM_DATA)
@Produces(MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN)
public Response setMediaType(MultipartInput input) throws IOException
{
   List<InputPart> parts = input.getParts();
   InputPart part = parts.get(0);
   part.setMediaType(MediaType.valueOf("application/foo+xml"));
   String s = part.getBody(String.class, null);
   ...
}

Sometimes, a part may have a Content-Type header with no charset parameter. If the InputPart.DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE_PROPERTY property is set and the value has a charset parameter, that value will be appended to an existing Content-Type header that has no charset parameter. It is also possible to specify a default charset using the constant InputPart.DEFAULT_CHARSET_PROPERTY (actual value "resteasy.provider.multipart.inputpart.defaultCharset"):

import org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.multipart.InputPart;

@Provider
@ServerInterceptor
public class ContentTypeSetterPreProcessorInterceptor implements
		PreProcessInterceptor {

	public ServerResponse preProcess(HttpRequest request,
			ResourceMethod method) throws Failure, WebApplicationException {
		request.setAttribute(InputPart.DEFAULT_CHARSET_PROPERTY, "UTF-8");
		return null;
	}

}

If both InputPart.DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE_PROPERTY and InputPart.DEFAULT_CHARSET_PROPERTY are set, then the value of InputPart.DEFAULT_CHARSET_PROPERTY will override any charset in the value of InputPart.DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE_PROPERTY.

ExceptionMappers are custom, application provided, components that can catch thrown application exceptions and write specific HTTP responses. The are classes annotated with @Provider and that implement this interface

         package javax.ws.rs.ext;

         import javax.ws.rs.core.Response;

         /**
         * Contract for a provider that maps Java exceptions to
         * {@link javax.ws.rs.core.Response}. An implementation of this interface must
         * be annotated with {@link Provider}.
         *
         * @see Provider
         * @see javax.ws.rs.core.Response
         */
         public interface ExceptionMapper<E>
         {

         /**
         * Map an exception to a {@link javax.ws.rs.core.Response}.
         *
         * @param exception the exception to map to a response
         * @return a response mapped from the supplied exception
         */
         Response toResponse(E exception);
         }
      

When an application exception is thrown it will be caught by the JAX-RS runtime. JAX-RS will then scan registered ExceptionMappers to see which one support marshalling the exception type thrown. Here is an example of ExceptionMapper

         @Provider
         public class EJBExceptionMapper implements ExceptionMapper<javax.ejb.EJBException>
         {

         Response toResponse(EJBException exception) {
         return Response.status(500).build();
         }

         }
      

You register ExceptionMappers the same way you do MessageBodyReader/Writers. By scanning, through the resteasy provider context-param (if you're deploying via a WAR file), or programmatically through the ResteasyProviderFactory class.

Resteasy has a set of built-in exceptions that are thrown by it when it encounters errors during dispatching or marshalling. They all revolve around specific HTTP error codes. You can find them in RESTEasy's javadoc under the package org.jboss.resteasy.spi. Here's a list of them:

You may override Resteasy built-in exceptions by writing an ExceptionMapper for the exception. For that matter, you can write an ExceptionMapper for any thrown exception including WebApplicationException

Resteasy provides an extension to JAX-RS that allows you to automatically set Cache-Control headers on a successful GET request. It can only be used on @GET annotated methods. A successful @GET request is any request that returns 200 OK response.

package org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.cache;

public @interface Cache
{
   int maxAge() default -1;
   int sMaxAge() default -1;
   boolean noStore() default false;
   boolean noTransform() default false;
   boolean mustRevalidate() default false;
   boolean proxyRevalidate() default false;
   boolean isPrivate() default false;
}

public @interface NoCache
{
   String[] fields() default {};
}

   

While @Cache builds a complex Cache-Control header, @NoCache is a simplified notation to say that you don't want anything cached i.e. Cache-Control: nocache.

These annotations can be put on the resource class or interface and specifies a default cache value for each @GET resource method. Or they can be put individually on each @GET resource method.

Resteasy has the ability to set up a client-side, browser-like, cache. You can use it with the Client Proxy Framework, or with raw ClientRequests. This cache looks for Cache-Control headers sent back with a server response. If the Cache-Control headers specify that the client is allowed to cache the response, Resteasy caches it within local memory. The cache obeys max-age requirements and will also automatically do HTTP 1.1 cache revalidation if either or both the Last-Modified and/or ETag headers are sent back with the original response. See the HTTP 1.1 specification for details on how Cache-Control or cache revalidation works.

It is very simple to enable caching. Here's an example of using the client cache with the Client Proxy Framework

@Path("/orders")
public interface OrderServiceClient {

   @Path("{id}")
   @GET
   @Produces("application/xml")
   public Order getOrder(@PathParam("id") String id);
}

To create a proxy for this interface and enable caching for that proxy requires only a few simple steps:

import org.jboss.resteasy.client.ProxyFactory;
import org.jboss.resteasy.client.cache.CacheFactory;
import org.jboss.resteasy.client.cache.LightweightBrowserCache;

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
{
      RegisterBuiltin.register(ResteasyProviderFactory.getInstance());
      OrderServiceClient proxy = ProxyFactory.create(OrderServiceClient.class, generateBaseUrl());

      // This line enables caching
      LightweightBrowserCache cache = CacheFactory.makeCacheable(proxy);
}

If you are using the ClientRequest class to make invocations rather than the proxy framework, it is just as easy

import org.jboss.resteasy.client.ProxyFactory;
import org.jboss.resteasy.client.cache.CacheFactory;
import org.jboss.resteasy.client.cache.LightweightBrowserCache;

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
{
      RegisterBuiltin.register(ResteasyProviderFactory.getInstance());

      // This line enables caching
      LightweightBrowserCache cache = new LightweightBrowserCache();

      ClientRequest request = new ClientRequest("http://example.com/orders/333");
      CacheFactory.makeCacheable(request, cache);
}

The LightweightBrowserCache, by default, has a maximum 2 megabytes of caching space. You can change this programmatically by callings its setMaxBytes() method. If the cache gets full, the cache completely wipes itself of all cached data. This may seem a bit draconian, but the cache was written to avoid unnecessary synchronizations in a concurrent environment where the cache is shared between multiple threads. If you desire a more complex caching solution or if you want to plug in a thirdparty cache please contact our resteasy-developers list and discuss it with the community.

Resteasy has a server-side cache that can sit in front of your JAX-RS services. It automatically caches marshalled responses from HTTP GET JAX-RS invocations if, and only if your JAX-RS resource method sets a Cache-Control header. When a GET comes in, the Resteasy Server Cache checks to see if the URI is stored in the cache. If it does, it returns the already marshalled response without invoking your JAX-RS method. Each cache entry has a max age to whatever is specified in the Cache-Control header of the initial request. The cache also will automatically generate an ETag using an MD5 hash on the response body. This allows the client to do HTTP 1.1 cache revalidation with the IF-NONE-MATCH header. The cache is also smart enough to perform revalidation if there is no initial cache hit, but the jax-rs method still returns a body that has the same ETag.

The cache is also automatically invalidated for a particular URI that has PUT, POST, or DELETE invoked on it. You can also obtain a reference to the cache by injecting a org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.cache.ServerCache via the @Context annotation

    @Context
    ServerCache cache;

    @GET
    public String get(@Context ServerCache cache) {...}

To set up the server-side cache you must register an instance of org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.cache.server.ServerCacheFeature via your Application getSingletons() or getClasses() methods. The underlying cache is Infinispan. By default, Resteasy will create an Infinispan cache for you. Alternatively, you can create and pass in an instance of your cache to the ServerCacheFeature constructor. You can also configure Infinispan by specifying various context-param variables in your web.xml. First, if you are using Maven you must depend on the resteasy-cache-core artifact:

<dependency>
   <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
   <artifactId>resteasy-cache-core</artifactId>
   <version>3.0.9.Final</version>
</dependency>

The next thing you should probably do is set up the Infinispan configuration in your web.xml.

<web-app>
    <context-param>
        <param-name>server.request.cache.infinispan.config.file</param-name>
        <param-value>infinispan.xml</param-value>
    </context-param>

    <context-param>
        <param-name>server.request.cache.infinispan.cache.name</param-name>
        <param-value>MyCache</param-value>
    </context-param>

</web-app>

server.request.cache.infinispan.config.file can either be a classpath or a file path. server.request.cache.infinispan.cache.name is the name of the cache you want to reference that is declared in the config file.

On the server-side you have two different types of filters. ContainerRequestFilters run before your JAX-RS resource method is invoked. ContainerResponseFilters run after your JAX-RS resource method is invoked. As an added caveat, ContainerRequestFilters come in two flavors: pre-match and post-matching. Pre-matching ContainerRequestFilters are designated with the @PreMatching annotation and will execute before the JAX-RS resource method is matched with the incoming HTTP request. Pre-matching filters often are used to modify request attributes to change how it matches to a specific resource method (i.e. strip .xml and add an Accept header). ContainerRequestFilters can abort the request by calling ContainerRequestContext.abortWith(Response). A filter might want to abort if it implements a custom authentication protocol.

After the resource class method is executed, JAX-RS will run all ContainerResponseFilters. These filters allow you to modify the outgoing response before it is marshalling and sent to the client. So given all that, here's some pseudo code to give some understanding of how things work.

        // execute pre match filters
        for (ContainerRequestFilter filter : preMatchFilters) {
            filter.filter(requestContext);
            if (isAborted(requestContext)) {
               sendAbortionToClient(requestContext);
               return;
            }
        }
        // match the HTTP request to a resource class and method
        JaxrsMethod method = matchMethod(requestContext);

        // Execute post match filters
        for (ContainerRequestFilter filter : postMatchFilters) {
           filter.filter(requestContext);
           if (isAborted(requestContext)) {
              sendAbortionToClient(requestContext);
              return;
           }
        }

        // execute resource class method
        method.execute(request);

        // execute response filters
        for (ContainerResponseFilter filter : responseFilters) {
           filter.filter(requestContext, responseContext);
        }
    

On the client side you also have two types of filters: ClientRequestFilter and ClientResponseFilter. ClientRequestFilters run before your HTTP request is sent over the wire to the server. ClientResponseFilters run after a response is received from the server, but before the response body is unmarshalled. ClientRequestFilters are also allowed to abort the execute of the request and provide a canned response without going over the wire to the server. ClientResponseFilters can modfiy the Response object before it is handed back to application code. Here's some pseudo code to illustrate things.

            // execute request filters
            for (ClientRequestFilter filter : requestFilters) {
               filter.filter(requestContext);
               if (isAborted(requestContext)) {
                  return requestContext.getAbortedResponseObject();
               }
            }

            // send request over the wire
            response = sendRequest(request);

            // execute response filters
            for (ClientResponseFilter filter : responseFilters) {
               filter.filter(requestContext, responseContext);
            }
        

While filters modify request or response headers, interceptors deal with message bodies. Interceptors are executed in the same call stack as their corresponding reader or writer. ReaderInterceptors wrap around the execution of MessageBodyReaders. WriterInterceptors wrap around the execution of MessageBodyWriters. They can be used to implement a specific content-encoding. They can be used to generate digital signatures or to post or pre-process a Java object model before or after it is marshalled.

Sometimes you want a filter or interceptor to only run for a specific resource method. You can do this in two different ways: register an implementation of DynamicFeature or use the @NameBinding annotation. The DynamicFeature interface is executed at deployment time for each resource method. You just use the Configurable interface to register the filters and interceptors you want for the specific resource method. @NameBinding works a lot like CDI interceptors. You annotate a custom annotation with @NameBinding and then apply that custom annotation to your filter and resource method

            @NameBinding
            public @interface DoIt {}

            @DoIt
            public class MyFilter implements ContainerRequestFilter {...}

            @Path("/root")
            public class MyResource {

               @GET
               @DoIt
               public String get() {...}
            }
        

Ordering is accomplished by using the @BindingPriority annotation on your filter or interceptor class.

While HTTP is a synchronous protocol it does have a faint idea of asynchronous invocations. The HTTP 1.1 response code 202, "Accepted" means that the server has received and accepted the response for processing, but the processing has not yet been completed. The Resteasy Asynchronous Job Service builds around this idea.

POST http://example.com/myservice?asynch=true

For example, if you make the above post with the asynch query parameter set to true, Resteasy will return a 202, "Accepted" response code and run the invocation in the background. It also sends back a Location header with a URL pointing to where the response of the background method is located.

HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
Location: http://example.com/asynch/jobs/3332334

The URI will have the form of:

/asynch/jobs/{job-id}?wait={millisconds}|nowait=true

You can perform the GET, POST, and DELETE operations on this job URL. GET returns whatever the JAX-RS resource method you invoked returned as a response if the job was completed. If the job has not completed, this GET will return a response code of 202, Accepted. Invoking GET does not remove the job, so you can call it multiple times. When Resteasy's job queue gets full, it will evict the least recently used job from memory. You can manually clean up after yourself by calling DELETE on the URI. POST does a read of the JOB response and will remove the JOB it has been completed.

Both GET and POST allow you to specify a maximum wait time in milliseconds, a "wait" query parameter. Here's an example:

POST http://example.com/asynch/jobs/122?wait=3000

If you do not specify a "wait" parameter, the GET or POST will not wait at all if the job is not complete.

NOTE!! While you can invoke GET, DELETE, and PUT methods asynchronously, this breaks the HTTP 1.1 contract of these methods. While these invocations may not change the state of the resource if invoked more than once, they do change the state of the server as new Job entries with each invocation. If you want to be a purist, stick with only invoking POST methods asynchronously.

Security NOTE! Resteasy role-based security (annotations) does not work with the Asynchronous Job Service. You must use XML declarative security within your web.xml file. Why? It is impossible to implement role-based security portably. In the future, we may have specific JBoss integration, but will not support other environments.

Resteasy also supports the notion of fire and forget. This will also return a 202, Accepted response, but no Job will be created. This is as simple as using the oneway query parameter instead of asynch. For example:

POST http://example.com/myservice?oneway=true

Security NOTE! Resteasy role-based security (annotations) does not work with the Asynchronous Job Service. You must use XML declaritive security within your web.xml file. Why? It is impossible to implement role-based security portably. In the future, we may have specific JBoss integration, but will not support other environments.

You must enable the Asynchronous Job Service in your web.xml file as it is not turned on by default.

<web-app>
    <!-- enable the Asynchronous Job Service -->
    <context-param>
        <param-name>resteasy.async.job.service.enabled</param-name>
        <param-value>true</param-value>
    </context-param>

    <!-- The next context parameters are all optional.  
         Their default values are shown as example param-values -->

    <!-- How many jobs results can be held in memory at once? -->
    <context-param>
        <param-name>resteasy.async.job.service.max.job.results</param-name>
        <param-value>100</param-value>
    </context-param>

    <!-- Maximum wait time on a job when a client is querying for it -->
    <context-param>
        <param-name>resteasy.async.job.service.max.wait</param-name>
        <param-value>300000</param-value>
    </context-param>

    <!-- Thread pool size of background threads that run the job -->
    <context-param>
        <param-name>resteasy.async.job.service.thread.pool.size</param-name>
        <param-value>100</param-value>
    </context-param>

    <!-- Set the base path for the Job uris -->
    <context-param>
        <param-name>resteasy.async.job.service.base.path</param-name>
        <param-value>/asynch/jobs</param-value>
    </context-param>

    <listener>
        <listener-class>
            org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.ResteasyBootstrap
        </listener-class>
    </listener>

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>Resteasy</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>
            org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.HttpServletDispatcher
        </servlet-class>
    </servlet>

    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>Resteasy</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

</web-app>

For Maven users, you must use the resteasy-spring artifact. Otherwise, the jar is available in the downloaded distribution.

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
    <artifactId>resteasy-spring</artifactId>
    <version>whatever version you are using</version>
</dependency>

RESTeasy comes with its own Spring ContextLoaderListener that registers a RESTeasy specific BeanPostProcessor that processes JAX-RS annotations when a bean is created by a BeanFactory. What does this mean? RESTeasy will automatically scan for @Provider and JAX-RS resource annotations on your bean class and register them as JAX-RS resources.

Here is what you have to do with your web.xml file

<web-app>
   <display-name>Archetype Created Web Application</display-name>

   <listener>
      <listener-class>org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.ResteasyBootstrap</listener-class>
   </listener>

   <listener>
      <listener-class>org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.spring.SpringContextLoaderListener</listener-class>
   </listener>

   <servlet>
      <servlet-name>Resteasy</servlet-name>
      <servlet-class>org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.HttpServletDispatcher</servlet-class>
   </servlet>

   <servlet-mapping>
      <servlet-name>Resteasy</servlet-name>
      <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
   </servlet-mapping>


</web-app>

The SpringContextLoaderListener must be declared after ResteasyBootstrap as it uses ServletContext attributes initialized by it.

If you do not use a Spring ContextLoaderListener to create your bean factories, then you can manually register the RESTeasy BeanFactoryPostProcessor by allocating an instance of org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.spring.SpringBeanProcessor. You can obtain instances of a ResteasyProviderFactory and Registry from the ServletContext attributes org.jboss.resteasy.spi.ResteasyProviderFactory and org.jboss.resteasy.spi.Registry. (Really the string FQN of these classes). There is also a org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.spring.SpringBeanProcessorServletAware, that will automatically inject references to the Registry and ResteasyProviderFactory from the Servlet Context. (that is, if you have used RestasyBootstrap to bootstrap Resteasy).

Our Spring integration supports both singletons and the "prototype" scope. RESTEasy handles injecting @Context references. Constructor injection is not supported though. Also, with the "prototype" scope, RESTEasy will inject any @*Param annotated fields or setters before the request is dispatched.

NOTE: You can only use auto-proxied beans with our base Spring integration. You will have undesirable affects if you are doing handcoded proxying with Spring, i.e., with ProxyFactoryBean. If you are using auto-proxied beans, you will be ok.

RESTEasy can also integrate with the Spring DispatcherServlet. The advantages of using this are that you have a simpler web.xml file, you can dispatch to either Spring controllers or Resteasy from under the same base URL, and finally, the most important, you can use Spring ModelAndView objects as return arguments from @GET resource methods. Setup requires you using the Spring DispatcherServlet in your web.xml file, as well as importing the springmvc-resteasy.xml file into your base Spring beans xml file. Here's an example web.xml file:

<web-app>
   <display-name>Archetype Created Web Application</display-name>

   <servlet>
      <servlet-name>Spring</servlet-name>
      <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet;</servlet-class>
   </servlet>

   <servlet-mapping>
      <servlet-name>Spring</servlet-name>
      <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
   </servlet-mapping>


</web-app>

Then within your main Spring beans xml, import the springmvc-resteasy.xml file

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xsi:schemaLocation="
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-2.5.xsd
    http://www.springframework.org/schema/util http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util-2.5.xsd
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
">

    <!-- Import basic SpringMVC Resteasy integration -->
    <import resource="classpath:springmvc-resteasy.xml"/>
....

You can specify resteasy configuration options by overriding the resteasy.deployment bean which is an instance of org.jboss.resteasy.spi.ResteasyDeployment. Here's an example of adding media type suffix mappings as well as enabling the Resteasy asynchronous job service.

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
    xmlns:util="http://www.springframework.org/schema/util"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-2.5.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/util http://www.springframework.org/schema/util/spring-util-2.5.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        ">

    <!-- Import basic SpringMVC Resteasy integration -->
    <import resource="classpath:springmvc-resteasy.xml" />

    <!-- override the bean definition for deployment -->
    <bean id="resteasy.deployment" class="org.jboss.resteasy.spi.ResteasyDeployment" init-method="start" destroy-method="stop">
        <property name="asyncJobServiceEnabled" value="true"/>
        <property name="mediaTypeMappings">
            <map>
                <entry key="json" value="application/json" />
                <entry key="xml" value="application/xml" />
            </map>
        </property>
    </bean>
...

JAX-RS 2.0 introduces a new client API so that you can make http requests to your remote RESTful web services. It is a 'fluent' request building API with really 3 main classes: Client, WebTarget, and Response. The Client interface is a builder of WebTarget instances. WebTarget represents a distinct URL or URL template from which you can build more sub-resource WebTargets or invoke requests on.

There are really two ways to create a Client. Standard way, or you can use the ResteasyClientBuilder class. The advantage of the latter is that it gives you a few more helper methods to configure your client.

            Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
            ... or...
            Client client = ClientBuilder.newBuilder().build();
            WebTarget target = client.target("http://foo.com/resource");
            Response response = target.request().get();
            String value = response.readEntity(String.class);
            response.close();  // You should close connections!

            ResteasyClient client = new ResteasyClientBuilder().build();
            ResteasyWebTarget target = client.target("http://foo.com/resource");
        

Resteasy will automatically load a set of default providers. (Basically all classes listed in all META-INF/services/javax.ws.rs.ext.Providers files). Additionally, you can manually register other providers, filters, and interceptors through the Configuration object provided by the method call Client.configuration(). Configuration also lets you set various configuration properties that may be needed.

Each WebTarget has its own Configuration instance which inherits the components and properties registered with its parent. This allows you to set specific configuration options per target resource. For example, username and password.

The Resteasy Proxy Framework is the mirror opposite of the JAX-RS server-side specification. Instead of using JAX-RS annotations to map an incoming request to your RESTFul Web Service method, the client framework builds an HTTP request that it uses to invoke on a remote RESTful Web Service. This remote service does not have to be a JAX-RS service and can be any web resource that accepts HTTP requests.

Resteasy has a client proxy framework that allows you to use JAX-RS annotations to invoke on a remote HTTP resource. The way it works is that you write a Java interface and use JAX-RS annotations on methods and the interface. For example:

public interface SimpleClient
{
   @GET
   @Path("basic")
   @Produces("text/plain")
   String getBasic();

   @PUT
   @Path("basic")
   @Consumes("text/plain")
   void putBasic(String body);

   @GET
   @Path("queryParam")
   @Produces("text/plain")
   String getQueryParam(@QueryParam("param")String param);

   @GET
   @Path("matrixParam")
   @Produces("text/plain")
   String getMatrixParam(@MatrixParam("param")String param);

   @GET
   @Path("uriParam/{param}")
   @Produces("text/plain")
   int getUriParam(@PathParam("param")int param);
}

Resteasy has a simple API based on Apache HttpClient. You generate a proxy then you can invoke methods on the proxy. The invoked method gets translated to an HTTP request based on how you annotated the method and posted to the server. Here's how you would set this up:

            Client client = ClientFactory.newClient();
            WebTarget target = client.target("http://example.com/base/uri");
            ResteasyWebTarget rtarget = (ResteasyWebTarget)target;

            SimpleClient simple = rtarget.proxy(SimpleClient.class);
            client.putBasic("hello world");
        

Alternatively you can use the Resteasy client extension interfaces directly:

            ResteasyClient client = new ResteasyClientBuilder().build();
            ResteasyWebTarget target = client.target("http://example.com/base/uri");

            SimpleClient simple = target.proxy(SimpleClient.class);
            client.putBasic("hello world");
        

@CookieParam works the mirror opposite of its server-side counterpart and creates a cookie header to send to the server. You do not need to use @CookieParam if you allocate your own javax.ws.rs.core.Cookie object and pass it as a parameter to a client proxy method. The client framework understands that you are passing a cookie to the server so no extra metadata is needed.

The framework also supports the JAX-RS locator pattern, but on the client side. So, if you have a method annotated only with @Path, that proxy method will return a new proxy of the interface returned by that method.

Network communication between the client and server is handled in Resteasy, by default, by HttpClient (4.x) from the Apache HttpComponents project. In general, the interface between the Resteasy Client Framework and the network is found in an implementation of org.jboss.resteasy.client.jaxrs.ClientHttpEngine, and org.jboss.resteasy.client.jaxrs.engines.ApacheHttpClient4Engine, which uses HttpClient (4.x), is the default implementation. Resteasy also ships with the following client engines, all found in the org.jboss.resteasy.client.jaxrs.engines package:

and a client executor may be passed to a specific ClientRequest:

ResteasyClient client = new ResteasyClientBuilder().httpEngine(engine).build();
     

Resteasy and HttpClient make reasonable default decisions so that it is possible to use the client framework without ever referencing HttpClient, but for some applications it may be necessary to drill down into the HttpClient details. ApacheHttpClient4Engine can be supplied with an instance of org.apache.http.client.HttpClient and an instance of org.apache.http.protocol.HttpContext, which can carry additional configuration details into the HttpClient layer. For example, authentication may be configured as follows:

// Configure HttpClient to authenticate preemptively
// by prepopulating the authentication data cache.
 
// 1. Create AuthCache instance
AuthCache authCache = new BasicAuthCache();
 
// 2. Generate BASIC scheme object and add it to the local auth cache
AuthScheme basicAuth = new BasicScheme();
authCache.put(new HttpHost("sippycups.bluemonkeydiamond.com"), basicAuth);
 
// 3. Add AuthCache to the execution context
BasicHttpContext localContext = new BasicHttpContext();
localContext.setAttribute(ClientContext.AUTH_CACHE, authCache);
 
// 4. Create client executor and proxy
DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
ApacheHttpClient4Engine engine = new ApacheHttpClient4Engine(httpClient, localContext);
ResteasyClient client = new ResteasyClientBuilder().httpEngine(engine).build();
     

One default decision made by HttpClient and adopted by Resteasy is the use of org.apache.http.impl.conn.SingleClientConnManager, which manages a single socket at any given time and which supports the use case in which one or more invocations are made serially from a single thread. For multithreaded applications, SingleClientConnManager may be replaced by org.apache.http.impl.conn.tsccm.ThreadSafeClientConnManager:

ClientConnectionManager cm = new ThreadSafeClientConnManager();
HttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient(cm);
ApacheHttpClient4Engine engine = new ApacheHttpClient4Engine(httpClient);