JBoss.orgCommunity Documentation

RESTEasy JAX-RS

RESTFul Web Services for Java

4.5.2.Final


Preface
1. Overview
2. License
3. Installation/Configuration
3.1. RESTEasy modules in WildFly
3.1.1. Other RESTEasy modules
3.1.2. Upgrading RESTEasy within WildFly
3.2. Deploying a RESTEasy application to WildFly
3.3. Deploying to other servlet containers
3.3.1. Servlet 3.0 containers
3.3.2. Older servlet containers
3.4. Configuration
3.4.1. Using MicroProfileConfig
3.4.2. Configuration MicroProfile Config
3.5. Configuration switches
3.6. javax.ws.rs.core.Application
3.7. RESTEasy as a ServletContextListener
3.8. RESTEasy as a Servlet Filter
3.9. Client side
4. Using @Path and @GET, @POST, etc.
4.1. @Path and regular expression mappings
5. @PathParam
5.1. Advanced @PathParam and Regular Expressions
5.2. @PathParam and PathSegment
6. @QueryParam
7. @HeaderParam
7.1. HeaderDelegates
8. Linking resources
8.1. Link Headers
8.2. Atom links in the resource representations
8.2.1. Configuration
8.2.2. Your first links injected
8.2.3. Customising how the Atom links are serialised
8.2.4. Specifying which JAX-RS methods are tied to which resources
8.2.5. Specifying path parameter values for URI templates
8.2.6. Securing entities
8.2.7. Extending the UEL context
8.2.8. Resource facades
9. @MatrixParam
10. @CookieParam
11. @FormParam
12. @Form
13. Improved @…Param annotations
14. Optional parameter types
15. @DefaultValue
16. @Encoded and encoding
17. @Context
18. JAX-RS Resource Locators and Sub Resources
19. Resources metadata configuration
20. JAX-RS Content Negotiation
20.1. URL-based negotiation
20.2. Query String Parameter-based negotiation
21. Content Marshalling/Providers
21.1. Default Providers and default JAX-RS Content Marshalling
21.2. Content Marshalling with @Provider classes
21.3. Providers Utility Class
21.4. Configuring Document Marshalling
21.5. Text media types and character sets
22. JAXB providers
22.1. JAXB Decorators
22.2. Pluggable JAXBContext's with ContextResolvers
22.3. JAXB + XML provider
22.3.1. @XmlHeader and @Stylesheet
22.4. JAXB + JSON provider
22.5. JAXB + FastinfoSet provider
22.6. Arrays and Collections of JAXB Objects
22.6.1. Retrieving Collections on the client side
22.6.2. JSON and JAXB Collections/arrays
22.7. Maps of JAXB Objects
22.7.1. Retrieving Maps on the client side
22.7.2. JSON and JAXB maps
22.8. Interfaces, Abstract Classes, and JAXB
22.9. Configurating JAXB Marshalling
23. RESTEasy Atom Support
23.1. RESTEasy Atom API and Provider
23.2. Using JAXB with the Atom Provider
24. JSON Support via Jackson
24.1. Using Jackson 1.9.x Outside of WildFly
24.2. Using Jackson 1.9.x Inside WildFly 8
24.3. Using Jackson 2 Outside of WildFly
24.4. Using Jackson 2 Inside WildFly 9 and above
24.5. Additional RESTEasy Specifics
24.6. JSONP Support
24.7. Jackson JSON Decorator
24.8. JSON Filter Support
24.9. Polymorphic Typing deserialization
25. JSON Support via Java EE 7 JSON-P API
26. Multipart Providers
26.1. Input with multipart/mixed
26.2. java.util.List with multipart data
26.3. Input with multipart/form-data
26.4. java.util.Map with multipart/form-data
26.5. Input with multipart/related
26.6. Output with multipart
26.7. Multipart Output with java.util.List
26.8. Output with multipart/form-data
26.9. Multipart FormData Output with java.util.Map
26.10. Output with multipart/related
26.11. @MultipartForm and POJOs
26.12. XML-binary Optimized Packaging (Xop)
26.13. Note about multipart parsing and working with other frameworks
26.14. Overwriting the default fallback content type for multipart messages
26.15. Overwriting the content type for multipart messages
26.16. Overwriting the default fallback charset for multipart messages
27. JAX-RS 2.1 Additions
27.1. CompletionStage support
27.2. Reactive Clients API
27.3. Server-Sent Events (SSE)
27.3.1. SSE Server
27.3.2. SSE Broadcasting
27.3.3. SSE Client
27.4. Java API for JSON Binding
28. String marshalling for String based @*Param
28.1. Simple conversion
28.2. ParamConverter
28.3. StringParameterUnmarshaller
28.4. Collections
28.4.1. @QueryParam
28.4.2. @MatrixParam
28.4.3. @HeaderParam
28.4.4. @CookieParam
28.4.5. @PathParam
28.5. Extension to ParamConverter semantics
28.6. Default multiple valued ParamConverter
29. Responses using javax.ws.rs.core.Response
30. Exception Handling
30.1. Exception Mappers
30.2. RESTEasy Built-in Internally-Thrown Exceptions
30.3. Overriding RESTEasy Builtin Exceptions
31. Configuring Individual JAX-RS Resource Beans
32. Content encoding
32.1. GZIP Compression/Decompression
32.1.1. Configuring GZIP compression / decompression
32.2. General content encoding
33. CORS
34. Content-Range Support
35. RESTEasy Caching Features
35.1. @Cache and @NoCache Annotations
35.2. Client "Browser" Cache
35.3. Local Server-Side Response Cache
35.4. HTTP preconditions
36. Filters and Interceptors
36.1. Server Side Filters
36.1.1. Asynchronous filters
36.2. Client Side Filters
36.3. Reader and Writer Interceptors
36.4. Per Resource Method Filters and Interceptors
36.5. Ordering
37. Asynchronous HTTP Request Processing
37.1. Using the @Suspended annotation
37.2. Using Reactive return types
37.3. Asynchronous filters
37.4. Asynchronous IO
38. Asynchronous Job Service
38.1. Using Async Jobs
38.2. Oneway: Fire and Forget
38.3. Setup and Configuration
39. Asynchronous Injection
39.1. org.jboss.resteasy.spi.ContextInjector Interface
39.2. Single<Foo> Example
39.3. Async Injector With Annotations Example
40. Reactive programming support
40.1. CompletionStage
40.2. CompletionStage in JAX-RS
40.3. Beyond CompletionStage
40.4. Pluggable reactive types: RxJava 2 in RESTEasy
40.5. Proxies
40.6. Adding extensions
41. Embedded Containers
41.1. Undertow
41.2. Sun JDK HTTP Server
41.3. Netty
41.4. Vert.x
41.5. EmbeddedJaxrsServer
42. Server-side Mock Framework
43. Securing JAX-RS and RESTEasy
44. JSON Web Signature and Encryption (JOSE-JWT)
44.1. JSON Web Signature (JWS)
44.2. JSON Web Encryption (JWE)
45. Doseta Digital Signature Framework
45.1. Maven settings
45.2. Signing API
45.2.1. @Signed annotation
45.3. Signature Verification API
45.3.1. Annotation-based verification
45.4. Managing Keys via a KeyRepository
45.4.1. Create a KeyStore
45.4.2. Configure Restreasy to use the KeyRepository
45.4.3. Using DNS to Discover Public Keys
46. Body Encryption and Signing via SMIME
46.1. Maven settings
46.2. Message Body Encryption
46.3. Message Body Signing
46.4. application/pkcs7-signature
47. EJB Integration
48. Spring Integration
48.1. Basic Integration
48.2. Customized Configuration
48.3. Spring MVC Integration
48.4. Undertow Embedded Spring Container
48.5. Processing Spring Web REST annotations in RESTEasy
48.6. Spring Boot starter
48.7. Upgrading in WildFly
49. CDI Integration
49.1. Using CDI beans as JAX-RS components
49.2. Default scopes
49.3. Configuration within WildFly
49.4. Configuration with different distributions
50. Guice 3.0 Integration
50.1. Request Scope
50.2. Binding JAX-RS utilities
50.3. Configuring Stage
50.4. Custom Injector creation
51. RESTEasy Client API
51.1. JAX-RS 2.0 Client API
51.2. RESTEasy Proxy Framework
51.2.1. Abstract Responses
51.2.2. Response proxies
51.2.3. Giving client proxy an ad hoc URI
51.2.4. Sharing an interface between client and server
51.3. Apache HTTP Client 4.x and other backends
51.3.1. HTTP redirect
51.3.2. Configuring SSL
51.3.3. HTTP proxy
51.3.4. Apache HTTP Client 4.3 APIs
51.3.5. Asynchronous HTTP Request Processing
51.3.6. Jetty Client Engine
51.3.7. Vertx Client Engine
51.3.8. Reactor Netty Client Engine
52. MicroProfile Rest Client
52.1. Client proxies
52.2. Concepts imported from JAX-RS
52.3. Beyond JAX-RS and RESTEasy
53. AJAX Client
53.1. Generated JavaScript API
53.1.1. JavaScript API servlet
53.1.2. JavaScript API usage
53.1.3. Work with @Form
53.1.4. MIME types and unmarshalling.
53.1.5. MIME types and marshalling.
53.2. Using the JavaScript API to build AJAX queries
53.2.1. The REST object
53.2.2. The REST.Request class
53.3. Caching Features
54. RESTEasy WADL Support
54.1. RESTEasy WADL Support for Servlet Container
54.2. RESTEasy WADL support for Sun JDK HTTP Server
54.3. RESTEasy WADL support for Netty Container
54.4. RESTEasy WADL Support for Undertow Container
55. RESTEasy Tracing Feature
55.1. Overview
55.2. Tracing Info Mode
55.3. Tracing Info Level
55.4. Basic Usages
55.5. Client Side Tracing Info
55.6. Json Formatted Response
55.7. List Of Tracing Events
55.8. Tracing Example
56. Validation
56.1. Violation reporting
56.2. Validation Service Providers
57. Internationalization and Localization
57.1. Internationalization
57.2. Localization
58. Maven and RESTEasy
59. Migration from older versions
59.1. Migration to RESTEasy 3.0 series
59.2. Migration to RESTEasy 3.1 series
59.3. Migration to RESTEasy 3.5+ series
59.4. Migration to RESTEasy 4 series
60. Books You Can Read

Commercial development support, production support and training for RESTEasy JAX-RS is available through JBoss, a division of Red Hat Inc. (see http://www.jboss.com/).

In some of the example listings, what is meant to be displayed on one line does not fit inside the available page width. These lines have been broken up. A '\' at the end of a line means that a break has been introduced to fit in the page, with the following lines indented. So:

Let's pretend to have an extremely \
long line that \
does not fit
This one is short

Is really:

Let's pretend to have an extremely long line that does not fit
This one is short

JAX-RS 2.0 (JSR-339) and JAX-RS 2.1 (JSR-370), are JCP specifications that provide a Java API for RESTful Web Services over the HTTP protocol. RESTEasy is a portable implementation of these specifications which can run in any Servlet container. Tighter integration with WildFly application server is also available to make the user experience nicer in that environment. RESTEasy also comes with additional features on top of plain JAX-RS functionalities.

RESTEasy is distributed under the Apache License 2.0. Some dependencies are covered by other open source licenses.

RESTEasy is installed and configured in different ways depending on which environment you are running in. If you are running in WildFly, RESTEasy is already bundled and integrated completely so there is very little you have to do. If you are running in a different environment, there is some manual installation and configuration you will have to do.

In WildFly, RESTEasy and the JAX-RS API are automatically loaded into your deployment's classpath if and only if you are deploying a JAX-RS application (as determined by the presence of JAX-RS annotations). However, only some RESTEasy features are automatically loaded. See Table 3.1. If you need any of those libraries which are not loaded automatically, you'll have to bring them in with a jboss-deployment-structure.xml file in the WEB-INF directory of your WAR file. Here's an example:

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

The services attribute must be set to "import" for modules that have default providers in a META-INF/services/javax.ws.rs.ext.Providers file.

To get an idea of which RESTEasy modules are loaded by default when JAX-RS services are deployed, please see the table below, which refers to a recent WildFly ditribution patched with the current RESTEasy distribution. Clearly, future and unpatched WildFly distributions might differ a bit in terms of modules enabled by default, as the container actually controls this too.


RESTEasy is bundled with WildFly and completely integrated as per the requirements of Java EE. You can use it with EJB and CDI and you can rely completely on WildFly to scan for and deploy your JAX-RS services and providers. All you have to provide is your JAX-RS service and provider classes packaged within a WAR either as POJOs, CDI beans, or EJBs. A simple way to configure an application is by simply providing an empty web.xml file. You can of course deploy any custom servlet, filter or security constraint you want to within your web.xml, but none of them are required:

<web-app version="3.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd">
</web-app>

Also, web.xml can supply to RESTEasy init-params and context-params (see Section 3.5, “Configuration switches”) if you want to tweak or turn on/off any specific RESTEasy feature.

Since we're not using a <servlet-mapping> element, we must define a javax.ws.rs.core.Application class (see Section 3.6, “javax.ws.rs.core.Application”) that is annotated with the javax.ws.rs.ApplicationPath annotation. If you return any empty set for classes and singletons, which is the behavior inherited from Application, your WAR will be scanned for resource and provider classes as indicated by the presence of JAX-RS annotations.

import javax.ws.rs.ApplicationPath;
import javax.ws.rs.core.Application;

@ApplicationPath("/root-path")
public class MyApplication extends Application
{
}       

Note. Actually, if the application jar contains an Application class (or a subclass thereof) which is annotated with an ApplicationPath annotation, a web.xml file isn't even needed. Of course, even in this case it can be used to specify additional information such as context parameters. If there is an Application class but it doesn't have an @ApplicationPath annotation, then a web.xml file with at least a <servlet-mapping> element is required.

Note. As mentioned in Section 3.1.1, “Other RESTEasy modules”, not all RESTEasy modules are bundled with WildFly. For example, resteasy-fastinfoset-provider and resteasy-wadl are not included among the modules listed in Section 3.1, “RESTEasy modules in WildFly”. If you want to use them in your application, you can include them in your WAR as you would if you were deploying outside of WildFly. See Section 3.3, “Deploying to other servlet containers” for more information.

If you are using RESTEasy outside of WildFly, in a standalone servlet container like Tomcat or Jetty, for example, you will need to include the appropriate RESTEasy jars in your WAR file. You will need the core classes in the resteasy-jaxrs module, and you may need additional facilities like the resteasy-jaxb-provider module. We strongly suggest that you use Maven to build your WAR files as RESTEasy is split into a bunch of different modules:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
    <artifactId>resteasy-core</artifactId>
    <version>4.5.2.Final</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
    <artifactId>resteasy-jaxb-provider</artifactId>
    <version>4.5.2.Final</version>
</dependency>

You can see sample Maven projects in https://github.com/resteasy/resteasy-examples.

If you are not using Maven, you can include the necessary jars by hand. If you download RESTEasy (from http://resteasy.jboss.org/downloads.html, for example) you will get a file like resteasy-jaxrs-<version>-all.zip. If you unzip it you will see a lib/ directory that contains the libraries needed by RESTEasy. Copy these, as needed, into your /WEB-INF/lib directory. Place your JAX-RS annotated class resources and providers within one or more jars within /WEB-INF/lib or your raw class files within /WEB-INF/classes.

The resteasy-servlet-initializer artifact will not work in Servlet versions older than 3.0. You'll then have to manually declare the RESTEasy servlet in your WEB-INF/web.xml file of your WAR project, and you'll have to use an Application class (see Section 3.6, “javax.ws.rs.core.Application”) which explicitly lists resources and providers. For example:

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

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>Resteasy</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>
            org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.HttpServletDispatcher
        </servlet-class>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>javax.ws.rs.Application</param-name>
            <param-value>com.restfully.shop.services.ShoppingApplication</param-value>
        </init-param>
    </servlet>

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

</web-app>

The RESTEasy servlet is responsible for initializing some basic components of RESTEasy.

Note. It is likely that support for pre-3.0 Servlet specifications will be deprecated and eliminated eventually.

RESTEasy uses the facilities of the MicroProfile Config project (https://github.com/eclipse/microprofile-config) for accessing configuration properties. The use of MicroProfile Config offers to both RESTEasy users and RESTEasy developers a great deal of flexibility in controlling runtime configuration.

In MicroProfile Config, a ConfigSource represents a Map<String, String> of property names to values, and a Config represents a sequence of ConfigSources, ordered by priority. The priority of a ConfigSource is given by an ordinal (represented by an int), with a higher value indicating a higher priority. For a given property name, the ConfigSources are searched in order until a value is found.

MicroProfile Config mandates the presence of the following ConfigSources:

  1. a ConfigSource based on System.getProperties() (ordinal = 400)
  2. a ConfigSource based on System.getenv() (ordinal = 300)
  3. a ConfigSource for each META-INF/microprofile-config.properties file on the ClassPath, separately configurable via a config_ordinal property inside each file (default ordinal = 100)

Note that a property which is found among the System properties and which is also in the System environment will be assigned the System property value because of the relative priorities of the ConfigSources.

The set of ConfigSources is extensible. For example, smallrye-config (https://github.com/smallrye/smallrye-config), the implementation of the MicroProfile Config specification currently used by RESTEasy, adds the following kinds of ConfigSources:

  1. PropertiesConfigSource creates a ConfigSource from a Java Properties object or a Map<String, String> object or a properties file (referenced by its URL) (default ordinal = 100).
  2. DirConfigSource creates a ConfigSource that will look into a directory where each file corresponds to a property (the file name is the property key and its textual content is the property value). This ConfigSource can be used to read configuration from Kubernetes ConfigMap (default ordinal = 100).
  3. ZkMicroProfileConfig creates a ConfigSourceConfigSource that is backed by Apache Zookeeper (ordinal = 150).

These can be registered programmatically by using an instance of ConfigProviderResolver:

Config config = new PropertiesConfigSource("file:/// ...");
ConfigProviderResolver.instance().registerConfig(config, getClass().getClassLoader());
        

where ConfigProviderResolver is part of the Eclipse API.

If the application is running in Wildfly, then Wildfly provides another set of ConfigSources, as described in the "MicroProfile Config Subsystem Configuration" section of the WildFly Admin guide (https://github.com/eclipse/microprofile-config).

Finally, RESTEasy automatically provides three more ConfigSources:

  • org.jboss.resteasy.microprofile.config.ServletConfigSource represents a servlet's <init-param>s from web.xml (ordinal = 60).
  • org.jboss.resteasy.microprofile.config.FilterConfigSource represents a filter's <init-param>s from web.xml (ordinal = 50). (See Section 3.8, “RESTEasy as a Servlet Filter” for more information.)
  • org.jboss.resteasy.microprofile.config.ServletContextConfigSource represents <context-param>s from web.xml (ordinal = 40).

RESTEasy can receive the following configuration options from any ConfigSources that are available at runtime:

Table 3.2. 

Option Name Default Value Description
resteasy.servlet.mapping.prefix no default If the url-pattern for the RESTEasy servlet-mapping is not /*
resteasy.providers no default A comma delimited list of fully qualified @Provider class names you want to register
resteasy.use.builtin.providers true Whether or not to register default, built-in @Provider classes
resteasy.resources no default A comma delimited list of fully qualified JAX-RS resource class names you want to register
resteasy.jndi.resources no default A comma delimited list of JNDI names which reference objects you want to register as JAX-RS resources
javax.ws.rs.Application no default Fully qualified name of Application class to bootstrap in a spec portable way
resteasy.media.type.mappings no default Replaces the need for an Accept header by mapping file name extensions (like .xml or .txt) to a media type. Used when the client is unable to use an Accept header to choose a representation (i.e. a browser). See Chapter 20, JAX-RS Content Negotiation for more details.
resteasy.language.mappings no default Replaces the need for an Accept-Language header by mapping file name extensions (like .en or .fr) to a language. Used when the client is unable to use an Accept-Language header to choose a language (i.e. a browser). See Chapter 20, JAX-RS Content Negotiation for more details.
resteasy.media.type.param.mapping no default Names a query parameter that can be set to an acceptable media type, enabling content negotiation without an Accept header. See Chapter 20, JAX-RS Content Negotiation for more details.
resteasy.role.based.security false Enables role based security. See Chapter 43, Securing JAX-RS and RESTEasy for more details.
resteasy.document.expand.entity.references false Expand external entities in org.w3c.dom.Document documents and JAXB object representations
resteasy.document.secure.processing.feature true Impose security constraints in processing org.w3c.dom.Document documents and JAXB object representations
resteasy.document.secure.disableDTDs true Prohibit DTDs in org.w3c.dom.Document documents and JAXB object representations
resteasy.wider.request.matching false Turns off the JAX-RS spec defined class-level expression filtering and instead tries to match version every method's full path.
resteasy.use.container.form.params false Obtain form parameters by using HttpServletRequest.getParameterMap(). Use this switch if you are calling this method within a servlet filter or eating the input stream within the filter.
resteasy.rfc7232preconditions false Enables RFC7232 compliant HTTP preconditions handling.
resteasy.gzip.max.input 10000000 Imposes maximum size on decompressed gzipped .
resteasy.secure.random.max.use 100 The number of times a SecureRandom can be used before reseeding.
resteasy.buffer.exception.entity true Upon receiving an exception, the client side buffers any response entity before closing the connection.
resteasy.add.charset true If a resource method returns a text/* or application/xml* media type without an explicit charset, RESTEasy will add "charset=UTF-8" to the returned Content-Type header. Note that the charset defaults to UTF-8 in this case, independent of the setting of this parameter.
resteasy.disable.html.sanitizer false Normally, a response with media type "text/html" and a status of 400 will be processed so that the characters "/", "<", ">", "&", """ (double quote), and "'" (single quote) are escaped to prevent an XSS attack. If this parameter is set to "true", escaping will not occur.
resteasy.patchfilter.disabled false Turns off the default patch filter to handle JSON patch and JSON Merge Patch request. A customerized patch method filter can be provided to serve the JSON patch and JSON merge patch request instead.


Note. The resteasy.servlet.mapping.prefix <context param> variable must be set if your servlet-mapping for the RESTEasy servlet has a url-pattern other than /*. For example, if the url-pattern is

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

Then the value of resteasy.servlet.mapping.prefix must be:

<context-param>
<param-name>resteasy.servlet.mapping.prefix</param-name>
<param-value>/restful-services</param-value>
</context-param>

The javax.ws.rs.core.Application class is a standard JAX-RS class that you may implement to provide information on your deployment. It is simply a class the lists all JAX-RS root resources and providers.

/**
* Defines the components of a JAX-RS application and supplies additional
* metadata. A JAX-RS application or implementation supplies a concrete
* subclass of this abstract class.
*/
public abstract class Application
{
    private static final Set<Object> emptySet = Collections.emptySet();

    /**
    * Get a set of root resource and provider classes. The default lifecycle
    * for resource class instances is per-request. The default lifecycle for
    * providers is singleton.
    * <p/>
    * <p>Implementations should warn about and ignore classes that do not
    * conform to the requirements of root resource or provider classes.
    * Implementations should warn about and ignore classes for which
    * {@link #getSingletons()} returns an instance. Implementations MUST
    * NOT modify the returned set.</p>
    *
    * @return a set of root resource and provider classes. Returning null
    * is equivalent to returning an empty set.
    */
    public abstract Set<Class<?>> getClasses();

    /**
    * Get a set of root resource and provider instances. Fields and properties
    * of returned instances are injected with their declared dependencies
    * (see {@link Context}) by the runtime prior to use.
    * <p/>
    * <p>Implementations should warn about and ignore classes that do not
    * conform to the requirements of root resource or provider classes.
    * Implementations should flag an error if the returned set includes
    * more than one instance of the same class. Implementations MUST
    * NOT modify the returned set.</p>
    * <p/>
    * <p>The default implementation returns an empty set.</p>
    *
    * @return a set of root resource and provider instances. Returning null
    * is equivalent to returning an empty set.
    */
    public Set<Object> getSingletons()
    {
        return emptySet;
    }

}            

Note. If your web.xml file does not have a <servlet-mapping> element, you must use an Application class annotated with @ApplicationPath.

@Path("/library")
public class Library {

   @GET
   @Path("/books")
   public String getBooks() {...}

   @GET
   @Path("/book/{isbn}")
   public String getBook(@PathParam("isbn") String id) {
      // search my database and get a string representation and return it
   }

   @PUT
   @Path("/book/{isbn}")
   public void addBook(@PathParam("isbn") String id, @QueryParam("name") String name) {...}

   @DELETE
   @Path("/book/{id}")
   public void removeBook(@PathParam("id") String id {...}
   
}

Let's say you have the RESTEasy servlet configured and reachable at a root path of http://myhost.com/services. The requests would be handled by the Library class:

  • GET http://myhost.com/services/library/books
  • GET http://myhost.com/services/library/book/333
  • PUT http://myhost.com/services/library/book/333
  • DELETE http://myhost.com/services/library/book/333

The @javax.ws.rs.Path annotation must exist on either the class and/or a resource method. If it exists on both the class and method, the relative path to the resource method is a concatenation of the class and method.

In the @javax.ws.rs package there are annotations for each HTTP method. @GET, @POST, @PUT, @DELETE, and @HEAD. You place these on public methods that you want to map to that certain kind of HTTP method. As long as there is a @Path annotation on the class, you do not have to have a @Path annotation on the method you are mapping. You can have more than one HTTP method as long as they can be distinguished from other methods.

When you have a @Path annotation on a method without an HTTP method, these are called JAXRSResourceLocators.

@PathParam is a parameter annotation which allows you to map variable URI path fragments into your method call.

@Path("/library")
public class Library {

   @GET
   @Path("/book/{isbn}")
   public String getBook(@PathParam("isbn") String id) {
      // search my database and get a string representation and return it
   }
}

What this allows you to do is embed variable identification within the URIs of your resources. In the above example, an isbn URI parameter is used to pass information about the book we want to access. The parameter type you inject into can be any primitive type, a String, or any Java object that has a constructor that takes a String parameter, or a static valueOf method that takes a String as a parameter. For example, lets say we wanted isbn to be a real object. We could do:

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

public class ISBN {
   public ISBN(String str) {...}
}

Or instead of a public String constructors, have a valueOf method:

public class ISBN {
    public static ISBN valueOf(String isbn) {...}
}

The @QueryParam annotation allows you to map a URI query string parameter or url form encoded parameter to your method invocation.

GET /books?num=5

@GET
public String getBooks(@QueryParam("num") int num) {
...
}

Currently since RESTEasy is built on top of a Servlet, it does not distinguish between URI query strings or url form encoded parameters. Like PathParam, your parameter type can be an String, primitive, or class that has a String constructor or static valueOf() method.

The @HeaderParam annotation allows you to map a request HTTP header to your method invocation.

GET /books?num=5

@GET
public String getBooks(@HeaderParam("From") String from) {
...
}

Like PathParam, your parameter type can be an String, primitive, or class that has a String constructor or static valueOf() method. For example, MediaType has a valueOf() method and you could do:

@PUT
public void put(@HeaderParam("Content-Type") MediaType contentType, ...)

In addition to the usual methods for translating parameters to and from strings, parameters annotated with @HeaderParam have another option: implementations of RuntimeDelegate$HeaderDelegate:

    /**
     * Defines the contract for a delegate that is responsible for
     * converting between the String form of a HTTP header and
     * the corresponding JAX-RS type {@code T}.
     *
     * @param <T> a JAX-RS type that corresponds to the value of a HTTP header.
     */
    public static interface HeaderDelegate<T> {

        /**
         * Parse the supplied value and create an instance of {@code T}.
         *
         * @param value the string value.
         * @return the newly created instance of {@code T}.
         * @throws IllegalArgumentException if the supplied string cannot be
         *                                  parsed or is {@code null}.
         */
        public T fromString(String value);

        /**
         * Convert the supplied value to a String.
         *
         * @param value the value of type {@code T}.
         * @return a String representation of the value.
         * @throws IllegalArgumentException if the supplied object cannot be
         *                                  serialized or is {@code null}.
         */
        public String toString(T value);
    }

HeaderDelegate is similar to ParamConverter, but it is not very convenient to register a HeaderDelegate since, unlike, for example, ParamConverterProvider, it is not treated by the JAX-RS specification as a provider. The class javax.ws.rs.core.Configurable, which is subclassed by, for example, org.jboss.resteasy.spi.ResteasyProviderFactory has methods like

    /**
     * Register a class of a custom JAX-RS component (such as an extension provider or
     * a {@link javax.ws.rs.core.Feature feature} meta-provider) to be instantiated
     * and used in the scope of this configurable context.
     *
     * ...
     *
     * @param componentClass JAX-RS component class to be configured in the scope of this
     *                       configurable context.
     * @return the updated configurable context.
     */
    public C register(Class<?> componentClass);

but it is not clear that they are applicable to HeaderDelegates.

RESTEasy approaches this problem by allowing HeaderDelegates to be annotated with @Provider. Not only will ResteasyProviderFactory.register() process HeaderDelegates, but another useful consequence is that HeaderDelegates can be discovered automatically at runtime.

There are two mechanisms available in RESTEasy to link a resource to another, and to link resources to operations: the Link HTTP header, and Atom links inside the resource representations.

RESTEasy has both client and server side support for the Link header specification. See the javadocs for org.jboss.resteasy.spi.LinkHeader, org.jboss.resteasy.spi.Link, and org.jboss.resteasy.client.ClientResponse.

The main advantage of Link headers over Atom links in the resource is that those links are available without parsing the entity body.

RESTEasy allows you to inject Atom links directly inside the entity objects you are sending to the client, via auto-discovery.

Warning

This is only available when using the Jackson2 or JAXB providers (for JSON and XML).

The main advantage over Link headers is that you can have any number of Atom links directly over the concerned resources, for any number of resources in the response. For example, you can have Atom links for the root response entity, and also for each of its children entities.

You need three things in order to tell RESTEasy to inject Atom links in your entities:

  • Annotate the JAX-RS method with @AddLinks to indicate that you want Atom links injected in your response entity.

  • Add RESTServiceDiscovery fields to the resource classes where you want Atom links injected.

  • Annotate the JAX-RS methods you want Atom links for with @LinkResource, so that RESTEasy knows which links to create for which resources.

The following example illustrates how you would declare everything in order to get the Atom links injected in your book store:

@Path("/")

@Consumes({"application/xml", "application/json"})
@Produces({"application/xml", "application/json"})
public interface BookStore {
    @AddLinks
    @LinkResource(value = Book.class)
    @GET
    @Path("books")
    public Collection<Book> getBooks();
    @LinkResource
    @POST
    @Path("books")
    public void addBook(Book book);
    @AddLinks
    @LinkResource
    @GET
    @Path("book/{id}")
    public Book getBook(@PathParam("id") String id);
    @LinkResource
    @PUT
    @Path("book/{id}")
    public void updateBook(@PathParam("id") String id, Book book);
    @LinkResource(value = Book.class)
    @DELETE
    @Path("book/{id}")
    public void deleteBook(@PathParam("id") String id);
}

And this is the definition of the Book resource:

@Mapped(namespaceMap = @XmlNsMap(jsonName = "atom", namespace = "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"))

@XmlRootElement
@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.NONE)
public class Book {
    @XmlAttribute
    private String author;
    @XmlID
    @XmlAttribute
    private String title;
    @XmlElementRef
    private RESTServiceDiscovery rest;
}

If you do a GET /order/foo you will then get this XML representation:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<book xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" title="foo" author="bar">
 <atom:link href="http://localhost:8081/books" rel="list"/>
 <atom:link href="http://localhost:8081/books" rel="add"/>
 <atom:link href="http://localhost:8081/book/foo" rel="self"/>
 <atom:link href="http://localhost:8081/book/foo" rel="update"/>
 <atom:link href="http://localhost:8081/book/foo" rel="remove"/>
</book>

And in JSON format:

{
 "book":
 {
  "@title":"foo",
  "@author":"bar",
  "atom.link":
   [
    {"@href":"http://localhost:8081/books","@rel":"list"},
    {"@href":"http://localhost:8081/books","@rel":"add"},
    {"@href":"http://localhost:8081/book/foo","@rel":"self"},
    {"@href":"http://localhost:8081/book/foo","@rel":"update"},
    {"@href":"http://localhost:8081/book/foo","@rel":"remove"}
   ]
 }
}

When RESTEasy adds links to your resources it needs to insert the right values in the URI template. This is done either automatically by guessing the list of values from the entity, or by specifying the values in the @LinkResource pathParameters parameter.

URI template values are extracted from the entity from fields or Java Bean properties annotated with @ResourceID, JAXB's @XmlID or JPA's @Id. If there are more than one URI template value to find in a given entity, you can annotate your entity with @ResourceIDs to list the names of fields or properties that make up this entity's Id. If there are other URI template values required from a parent entity, we try to find that parent in a field or Java Bean property annotated with @ParentResource. The list of URI template values extracted up every @ParentResource is then reversed and used as the list of values for the URI template.

For example, let's consider the previous Book example, and a list of comments:

@XmlRootElement

@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.NONE)
public class Comment {
    @ParentResource
    private Book book;
    @XmlElement
    private String author;
    @XmlID
    @XmlAttribute
    private String id;
    @XmlElementRef
    private RESTServiceDiscovery rest;
}

Given the previous book store service augmented with comments:

@Path("/")

@Consumes({"application/xml", "application/json"})
@Produces({"application/xml", "application/json"})
public interface BookStore {
    @AddLinks
    @LinkResources({
        @LinkResource(value = Book.class, rel = "comments"),
        @LinkResource(value = Comment.class)
    })
    @GET
    @Path("book/{id}/comments")
    public Collection<Comment> getComments(@PathParam("id") String bookId);
    @AddLinks
    @LinkResource
    @GET
    @Path("book/{id}/comment/{cid}")
    public Comment getComment(@PathParam("id") String bookId, @PathParam("cid") String commentId);
    @LinkResource
    @POST
    @Path("book/{id}/comments")
    public void addComment(@PathParam("id") String bookId, Comment comment);
    @LinkResource
    @PUT
    @Path("book/{id}/comment/{cid}")
    public void updateComment(@PathParam("id") String bookId, @PathParam("cid") String commentId, Comment comment);
    @LinkResource(Comment.class)
    @DELETE
    @Path("book/{id}/comment/{cid}")
    public void deleteComment(@PathParam("id") String bookId, @PathParam("cid") String commentId);
}

Whenever we need to make links for a Book entity, we look up the ID in the Book's @XmlID property. Whenever we make links for Comment entities, we have a list of values taken from the Comment's @XmlID and its @ParentResource: the Book and its @XmlID.

For a Comment with id "1" on a Book with title "foo" we will therefore get a list of URI template values of {"foo", "1"}, to be replaced in the URI template, thus obtaining either "/book/foo/comments" or "/book/foo/comment/1".

If you do not want to annotate your entities with resource ID annotations (@ResourceID, @ResourceIDs, @XmlID or @Id) and @ParentResource, you can also specify the URI template values inside the @LinkResource annotation, using Unified Expression Language expressions:

Table 8.3. 

@LinkResource URI template parameter

Parameter Type Function Default
pathParameters String[] Declares a list of UEL expressions to obtain the URI template values. Defaults to using @ResourceID, @ResourceIDs, @XmlID or @Id and @ParentResource annotations to extract the values from the model.

The UEL expressions are evaluated in the context of the entity, which means that any unqualified variable will be taken as a property for the entity itself, with the special variable this bound to the entity we're generating links for.

The previous example of Comment service could be declared as such:

@Path("/")

@Consumes({"application/xml", "application/json"})
@Produces({"application/xml", "application/json"})
public interface BookStore {
    @AddLinks
    @LinkResources({
        @LinkResource(value = Book.class, rel = "comments", pathParameters = "${title}"),
        @LinkResource(value = Comment.class, pathParameters = {"${book.title}", "${id}"})
    })
    @GET
    @Path("book/{id}/comments")
    public Collection<Comment> getComments(@PathParam("id") String bookId);
    @AddLinks
    @LinkResource(pathParameters = {"${book.title}", "${id}"})
    @GET
    @Path("book/{id}/comment/{cid}")
    public Comment getComment(@PathParam("id") String bookId, @PathParam("cid") String commentId);
    @LinkResource(pathParameters = {"${book.title}", "${id}"})
    @POST
    @Path("book/{id}/comments")
    public void addComment(@PathParam("id") String bookId, Comment comment);
    @LinkResource(pathParameters = {"${book.title}", "${id}"})
    @PUT
    @Path("book/{id}/comment/{cid}")
    public void updateComment(@PathParam("id") String bookId, @PathParam("cid") String commentId, Comment comment);
    @LinkResource(Comment.class, pathParameters = {"${book.title}", "${id}"})
    @DELETE
    @Path("book/{id}/comment/{cid}")
    public void deleteComment(@PathParam("id") String bookId, @PathParam("cid") String commentId);
}

We've seen that both the URI template values and the security constraints of @LinkResource use UEL to evaluate expressions, and we provide a basic UEL context with access only to the entity we're injecting links in, and nothing more.

If you want to add more variables or functions in this context, you can by adding a @LinkELProvider annotation on the JAX-RS method, its class, or its package. This annotation's value should point to a class that implements the ELProvider interface, which wraps the default ELContext in order to add any missing functions.

For example, if you want to support the Seam annotation s:hasPermission(target, permission) in your security constraints, you can add a package-info.java file like this:

@LinkELProvider(SeamELProvider.class)

package org.jboss.resteasy.links.test;
import org.jboss.resteasy.links.*;

With the following provider implementation:

package org.jboss.resteasy.links.test;


import javax.el.ELContext;
import javax.el.ELResolver;
import javax.el.FunctionMapper;
import javax.el.VariableMapper;
import org.jboss.seam.el.SeamFunctionMapper;
import org.jboss.resteasy.links.ELProvider;
public class SeamELProvider implements ELProvider {
    public ELContext getContext(final ELContext ctx) {
        return new ELContext() {
            private SeamFunctionMapper functionMapper;
            @Override
            public ELResolver getELResolver() {
                return ctx.getELResolver();
            }
            @Override
            public FunctionMapper getFunctionMapper() {
                if (functionMapper == null)
                    functionMapper = new SeamFunctionMapper(ctx
                            .getFunctionMapper());
                return functionMapper;
            }
            @Override
            public VariableMapper getVariableMapper() {
                return ctx.getVariableMapper();
            }
        };
    }
}

And then use it as such:

@Path("/")

@Consumes({"application/xml", "application/json"})
@Produces({"application/xml", "application/json"})
public interface BookStore {
    @AddLinks
    @LinkResources({
        @LinkResource(value = Book.class, rel = "comments", constraint = "${s:hasPermission(this, 'add-comment')}"),
        @LinkResource(value = Comment.class, constraint = "${s:hasPermission(this, 'insert')}")
    })
    @GET
    @Path("book/{id}/comments")
    public Collection<Comment> getComments(@PathParam("id") String bookId);
    @AddLinks
    @LinkResource(constraint = "${s:hasPermission(this, 'read')}")
    @GET
    @Path("book/{id}/comment/{cid}")
    public Comment getComment(@PathParam("id") String bookId, @PathParam("cid") String commentId);
    @LinkResource(constraint = "${s:hasPermission(this, 'insert')}")
    @POST
    @Path("book/{id}/comments")
    public void addComment(@PathParam("id") String bookId, Comment comment);
    @LinkResource(constraint = "${s:hasPermission(this, 'update')}")
    @PUT
    @Path("book/{id}/comment/{cid}")
    public void updateComment(@PathParam("id") String bookId, @PathParam("cid") String commentId, Comment comment);
    @LinkResource(Comment.class, constraint = "${s:hasPermission(this, 'delete')}")
    @DELETE
    @Path("book/{id}/comment/{cid}")
    public void deleteComment(@PathParam("id") String bookId, @PathParam("cid") String commentId);
}

Sometimes it is useful to add resources which are just containers or layers on other resources. For example if you want to represent a collection of Comment with a start index and a certain number of entries, in order to implement paging. Such a collection is not really an entity in your model, but it should obtain the "add" and "list" link relations for the Comment entity.

This is possible using resource facades. A resource facade is a resource which implements the ResourceFacade<T> interface for the type T, and as such, should receive all links for that type.

Since in most cases the instance of the T type is not directly available in the resource facade, we need another way to extract its URI template values, and this is done by calling the resource facade's pathParameters() method to obtain a map of URI template values by name. This map will be used to fill in the URI template values for any link generated for T, if there are enough values in the map.

Here is an example of such a resource facade for a collection of Comments:

@XmlRootElement

@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.NONE)
public class ScrollableCollection implements ResourceFacade<Comment> {
    private String bookId;
    @XmlAttribute
    private int start;
    @XmlAttribute
    private int totalRecords;
    @XmlElement
    private List<Comment> comments = new ArrayList<Comment>();
    @XmlElementRef
    private RESTServiceDiscovery rest;
    public Class<Comment> facadeFor() {
        return Comment.class;
    }
    public Map<String, ? extends Object> pathParameters() {
        HashMap<String, String> map = new HashMap<String, String>();
        map.put("id", bookId);
        return map;
    }
}

This will produce such an XML collection:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<collection xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" totalRecords="2" start="0">
 <atom.link href="http://localhost:8081/book/foo/comments" rel="add"/>
 <atom.link href="http://localhost:8081/book/foo/comments" rel="list"/>
 <comment xmlid="0">
  <text>great book</text>
  <atom.link href="http://localhost:8081/book/foo/comment/0" rel="self"/>
  <atom.link href="http://localhost:8081/book/foo/comment/0" rel="update"/>
  <atom.link href="http://localhost:8081/book/foo/comment/0" rel="remove"/>
  <atom.link href="http://localhost:8081/book/foo/comments" rel="add"/>
  <atom.link href="http://localhost:8081/book/foo/comments" rel="list"/>
 </comment>
 <comment xmlid="1">
  <text>terrible book</text>
  <atom.link href="http://localhost:8081/book/foo/comment/1" rel="self"/>
  <atom.link href="http://localhost:8081/book/foo/comment/1" rel="update"/>
  <atom.link href="http://localhost:8081/book/foo/comment/1" rel="remove"/>
  <atom.link href="http://localhost:8081/book/foo/comments" rel="add"/>
  <atom.link href="http://localhost:8081/book/foo/comments" rel="list"/>
 </comment>
</collection>

The idea of matrix parameters is that they are an arbitrary set of name-value pairs embedded in a uri path segment. 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. The @MatrixParam annotation allows you to inject URI matrix parameters into your method invocation

@GET
public String getBook(@MatrixParam("name") String name, @MatrixParam("author") String author) {...}

There is one big problem with @MatrixParam that the current version of the specification does not resolve. What if the same MatrixParam exists twice in different path segments? In this case, right now, its probably better to use PathParam combined with PathSegment.

The @CookieParam annotation allows you to inject the value of a cookie or an object representation of an HTTP request cookie into your method invocation

GET /books?num=5

@GET
public String getBooks(@CookieParam("sessionid") int id) {
...
}

@GET
public String getBooks(@CookieParam("sessionid") javax.ws.rs.core.Cookie id) {...}

Like PathParam, your parameter type can be an String, primitive, or class that has a String constructor or static valueOf() method. You can also get an object representation of the cookie via the javax.ws.rs.core.Cookie class.

When the input request body is of the type "application/x-www-form-urlencoded", a.k.a. an HTML Form, you can inject individual form parameters from the request body into method parameter values.

<form method="POST" action="/resources/service">
First name: 
<input type="text" name="firstname">
<br>
Last name: 
<input type="text" name="lastname">
</form>

If you post through that form, this is what the service might look like:

@Path("/")
public class NameRegistry {

   @Path("/resources/service")
   @POST
   public void addName(@FormParam("firstname") String first, @FormParam("lastname") String last) {...}

You cannot combine @FormParam with the default "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" that unmarshalls to a MultivaluedMap<String, String>. i.e. This is illegal:

@Path("/")
public class NameRegistry {

   @Path("/resources/service")
   @POST
   @Consumes("application/x-www-form-urlencoded")
   public void addName(@FormParam("firstname") String first, MultivaluedMap<String, String> form) {...}

This is a RESTEasy specific annotation that allows you to re-use any @*Param annotation within an injected class. RESTEasy will instantiate the class and inject values into any annotated @*Param or @Context property. This is useful if you have a lot of parameters on your method and you want to condense them into a value object.

public class MyForm {

    @FormParam("stuff")
    private int stuff;

    @HeaderParam("myHeader")
    private String header;

    @PathParam("foo")
    public void setFoo(String foo) {...}
}


@POST
@Path("/myservice")
public void post(@Form MyForm form) {...}

When somebody posts to /myservice, RESTEasy will instantiate an instance of MyForm and inject the form parameter "stuff" into the "stuff" field, the header "myheader" into the header field, and call the setFoo method with the path param variable of "foo".

Also, @Form has some expanded @FormParam features. If you specify a prefix within the Form param, this will prepend a prefix to any form parameter lookup. For example, let's say you have one Address class, but want to reference invoice and shipping addresses from the same set of form parameters:

public static class Person
{
    @FormParam("name")
    private String name;

    @Form(prefix = "invoice")
    private Address invoice;

    @Form(prefix = "shipping")
    private Address shipping;
}

public static class Address
{
    @FormParam("street")
    private String street;
}

@Path("person")
public static class MyResource
{
    @POST
    @Produces(MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN)
    @Consumes(MediaType.APPLICATION_FORM_URLENCODED)
    public String post(@Form Person p)
    {
        return p.toString();
    }
}

In this example, the client could send the following form parameters:

name=bill
invoice.street=xxx
shipping.street=yyy

The Person.invoice and Person.shipping fields would be populated appropriately. Also, prefix mappings also support lists and maps:

public static class Person {
    @Form(prefix="telephoneNumbers") List<TelephoneNumber> telephoneNumbers;
    @Form(prefix="address") Map<String, Address> addresses;
}

public static class TelephoneNumber {
    @FormParam("countryCode") private String countryCode;
    @FormParam("number") private String number;
}

public static class Address {
    @FormParam("street") private String street;
    @FormParam("houseNumber") private String houseNumber;
}

@Path("person")
public static class MyResource {

    @POST
    @Consumes(MediaType.APPLICATION_FORM_URLENCODED)
    public void post (@Form Person p) {} 

The following form params could be submitted and the Person.telephoneNumbers and Person.addresses fields would be populated appropriately

request.addFormHeader("telephoneNumbers[0].countryCode", "31");
request.addFormHeader("telephoneNumbers[0].number", "0612345678");
request.addFormHeader("telephoneNumbers[1].countryCode", "91");
request.addFormHeader("telephoneNumbers[1].number", "9717738723");
request.addFormHeader("address[INVOICE].street", "Main Street");
request.addFormHeader("address[INVOICE].houseNumber", "2");
request.addFormHeader("address[SHIPPING].street", "Square One");
request.addFormHeader("address[SHIPPING].houseNumber", "13");

With the addition of parameter names in the bytecode since Java 8, it is no longer necessary to require users to specify parameter names in the following annotations: @PathParam, @QueryParam, @FormParam, @CookieParam, @HeaderParam and @MatrixParam. In order to benefit from this feature, you have to switch to new annotations with the same name, in a different package, which have an optional value parameter. To use this, follow these steps:

  • Import the org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.jaxrs package to replace annotations from the JAX-RS spec.
  • Tell your build system to record method parameter names in the bytecode.
  • Remove the annotation value if the name matches the name of the annotated variable.

Note that you can omit the annotation name for annotated method parameters as well as annotated fields or JavaBean properties.

For Maven users, recording method parameter names in the bytecode can be enabled by setting the maven.compiler.parameters to true:

    <properties>
        <maven.compiler.parameters>true</maven.compiler.parameters>
    </properties>

Usage:

import org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.jaxrs.*;

@Path("/library")
public class Library {

   @GET
   @Path("/book/{isbn}")
   public String getBook(@PathParam String isbn) {
      // search my database and get a string representation and return it
   }
}

If your annotated variable does not have the same name as the path parameter, you can still specify the name:

import org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.jaxrs.*;

@Path("/library")
public class Library {

   @GET
   @Path("/book/{isbn}")
   public String getBook(@PathParam("isbn") String id) {
      // search my database and get a string representation and return it
   }
}

RESTEasy offers a mechanism to support a series of java.util.Optional types as a wrapper object types. This will give users the ability to use optional typed parameters, and eliminate all null checks by using methods like Optional.orElse().

Here is the sample:

@Path("/double")
@GET
public String optDouble(@QueryParam("value") OptionalDouble value) {
    return Double.toString(value.orElse(4242.0));
}

From the above sample code we can see that the OptionalDouble can be used as parameter type, and when users don't provide a value in @QueryParam, then the default value will be returned.

Here is the list of supported optional parameter types:

  • @QueryParam

  • @FormParam

  • @MatrixParam

  • @HeaderParam

  • @CookieParam

As the list shown above, those parameter types support the Java-provided Optional types. Please note that the @PathParam is an exception for which Optional is not available. The reason is that Optional for the @PathParam use case would just be a NO-OP, since an element of the path cannot be omitted.

@DefaultValue is a parameter annotation that can be combined with any of the other @*Param annotations to define a default value when the HTTP request item does not exist.

@GET
public String getBooks(@QueryParam("num") @DefaultValue("10") int num) {...}

JAX-RS allows you to get encoded or decoded @*Params and specify path definitions and parameter names using encoded or decoded strings.

The @javax.ws.rs.Encoded annotation can be used on a class, method, or param. By default, inject @PathParam and @QueryParams are decoded. By additionally adding the @Encoded annotation, the value of these params will be provided in encoded form.

@Path("/")
public class MyResource {

    @Path("/{param}")
    @GET
    public String get(@PathParam("param") @Encoded String param) {...}
}

In the above example, the value of the @PathParam injected into the param of the get() method will be URL encoded. Adding the @Encoded annotation as a paramater annotation triggers this affect.

You may also use the @Encoded annotation on the entire method and any combination of @QueryParam or @PathParam's values will be encoded.

@Path("/")
public class MyResource {
  
    @Path("/{param}")
    @GET
    @Encoded
    public String get(@QueryParam("foo") String foo, @PathParam("param") String param) {}
}

In the above example, the values of the "foo" query param and "param" path param will be injected as encoded values.

You can also set the default to be encoded for the entire class.

@Path("/")
@Encoded
public class ClassEncoded {
  
    @GET
    public String get(@QueryParam("foo") String foo) {}
}

The @Path annotation has an attribute called encode. Controls whether the literal part of the supplied value (those characters that are not part of a template variable) are URL encoded. If true, any characters in the URI template that are not valid URI character will be automatically encoded. If false then all characters must be valid URI characters. By default this is set to true. If you want to encoded the characters yourself, you may.

@Path(value="hello%20world", encode=false)

Much like @Path.encode(), this controls whether the specified query param name should be encoded by the container before it tries to find the query param in the request.

@QueryParam(value="hello%20world", encode=false)

The @Context annotation allows you to inject instances of

  • javax.ws.rs.core.HttpHeaders
  • javax.ws.rs.core.UriInfo
  • javax.ws.rs.core.Request
  • javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest
  • javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse
  • javax.servlet.ServletConfig
  • javax.servlet.ServletContext
  • javax.ws.rs.core.SecurityContext

objects.

Resource classes are able to partially process a request and provide another "sub" resource object that can process the remainder of the request. For example:

@Path("/")
public class ShoppingStore {

    @Path("/customers/{id}")
    public Customer getCustomer(@PathParam("id") int id) {
        Customer cust = ...; // Find a customer object
        return cust;
    }
}

public class Customer {
   
    @GET
    public String get() {...}

    @Path("/address")
    public String getAddress() {...}
}

Resource methods that have a @Path annotation, but no HTTP method are considered sub-resource locators. Their job is to provide an object that can process the request. In the above example ShoppingStore is a root resource because its class is annotated with @Path. The getCustomer() method is a sub-resource locator method.

If the client invoked:

GET /customer/123

The ShoppingStore.getCustomer() method would be invoked first. This method provides a Customer object that can service the request. The http request will be dispatched to the Customer.get() method. Another example is:

GET /customer/123/address

In this request, again, first the ShoppingStore.getCustomer() method is invoked. A customer object is returned, and the rest of the request is dispatched to the Customer.getAddress() method.

Another interesting feature of Sub-resource locators is that the locator method result is dynamically processed at runtime to figure out how to dispatch the request. So, the ShoppingStore.getCustomer() method does not have to declare any specific type.

@Path("/")
public class ShoppingStore {

   @Path("/customers/{id}")
   public java.lang.Object getCustomer(@PathParam("id") int id) {
      Customer cust = ...; // Find a customer object
      return cust;
   }
}

public class Customer {
   
    @GET
    public String get() {...}

    @Path("/address")
    public String getAddress() {...}
}

In the above example, getCustomer() returns a java.lang.Object. Per request, at runtime, the JAX-RS server will figure out how to dispatch the request based on the object returned by getCustomer(). What are the uses of this? Well, maybe you have a class hierarchy for your customers. Customer is the abstract base, CorporateCustomer and IndividualCustomer are subclasses. Your getCustomer() method might be doing a Hibernate polymorphic query and doesn't know, or care, what concrete class is it querying for, or what it returns.

@Path("/")
public class ShoppingStore {

   @Path("/customers/{id}")
   public java.lang.Object getCustomer(@PathParam("id") int id) {
      Customer cust = entityManager.find(Customer.class, id);
      return cust;
   }
}

public class Customer {
   
    @GET
    public String get() {...}

    @Path("/address")
    public String getAddress() {...}
}

public class CorporateCustomer extends Customer {
   
    @Path("/businessAddress")
    public String getAddress() {...}
}

When processing JAX-RS deployments, RESTEasy relies on ResourceBuilder to create metadata for each JAX-RS resource. Such metadata is defined using the metadata SPI in package org.jboss.resteasy.spi.metadata, in particular the ResourceClass interface:

package org.jboss.resteasy.spi.metadata;

public interface ResourceClass
{
  String getPath();

  Class<?> getClazz();

  ResourceConstructor getConstructor();

  FieldParameter[] getFields();

  SetterParameter[] getSetters();

  ResourceMethod[] getResourceMethods();

  ResourceLocator[] getResourceLocators();
}

Among the other classes and interfaces defining metadata SPI, the following interfaces are worth a mention here:

public interface ResourceConstructor
{
  ResourceClass getResourceClass();

  Constructor getConstructor();

  ConstructorParameter[] getParams();
}

public interface ResourceMethod extends ResourceLocator
{
  Set<String> getHttpMethods();

  MediaType[] getProduces();

  MediaType[] getConsumes();

  boolean isAsynchronous();

  void markAsynchronous();
}

public interface ResourceLocator
{
  ResourceClass getResourceClass();

  Class<?> getReturnType();

  Type getGenericReturnType();

  Method getMethod();

  Method getAnnotatedMethod();

  MethodParameter[] getParams();

  String getFullpath();

  String getPath();

}

Now, the interesting point is that RESTEasy allows tuning the metadata generation by providing implementations of the ResourceClassProcessor interface:

package org.jboss.resteasy.spi.metadata;

public interface ResourceClassProcessor
{

  /**
   * Allows the implementation of this method to modify the resource metadata represented by
   * the supplied {@link ResourceClass} instance. Implementation will typically create
   * wrappers which modify only certain aspects of the metadata.
   *
   * @param clazz The original metadata
   * @return the (potentially modified) metadata (never null)
   */
  ResourceClass process(ResourceClass clazz);

}

The processors are meant to be, and are resolved as, regular JAX-RS annotated providers. They allow for wrapping resource metadata classes with custom versions that can be used for various advanced scenarios like

  • adding additional resource method/locators to the resource
  • altering the http methods
  • altering the @Produces / @Consumes media types
  • ...

The HTTP protocol has built in content negotiation headers that allow the client and server to specify what content they are transferring and what content they would prefer to get. The server declares content preferences via the @Produces and @Consumes headers.

@Consumes is an array of media types that a particular resource or resource method consumes. For example:

@Consumes("text/*")
@Path("/library")
public class Library {

    @POST
    public String stringBook(String book) {...}

    @Consumes("text/xml")
    @POST
    public String jaxbBook(Book book) {...}
}

When a client makes a request, JAX-RS first finds all methods that match the path, then, it sorts things based on the content-type header sent by the client. So, if a client sent:

POST /library
Content-Type: text/plain

This is a nice book

The stringBook() method would be invoked because it matches to the default "text/*" media type. Now, if the client instead sends XML:

POST /library
Content-Type: text/xml

<book name="EJB 3.0" author="Bill Burke"/>

The jaxbBook() method would be invoked.

The @Produces is used to map a client request and match it up to the client's Accept header. The Accept HTTP header is sent by the client and defines the media types the client prefers to receive from the server.

@Produces("text/*")
@Path("/library")
public class Library {

@GET
@Produces("application/json")
public String getJSON() {...}

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

So, if the client sends:

GET /library
Accept: application/json

The getJSON() method would be invoked.

@Consumes and @Produces can list multiple media types that they support. The client's Accept header can also send multiple types it might like to receive. More specific media types are chosen first. The client Accept header or @Produces @Consumes can also specify weighted preferences that are used to match up requests with resource methods. This is best explained by RFC 2616 section 14.1 . RESTEasy supports this complex way of doing content negotiation.

A variant in JAX-RS is a combination of media type, content-language, and content encoding as well as etags, last modified headers, and other preconditions. This is a more complex form of content negotiation that is done programmatically by the application developer using the javax.ws.rs.Variant, VarianListBuilder, and Request objects. Request is injected via @Context. Read the javadoc for more info on these.

RESTEasy can do content negotiation based in a parameter in query string. To enable this, the parameter resteasy.media.type.param.mapping can be configured. In web.xml, it would look like the following:

<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>

    ...
</web-app>

See Section 3.4, “Configuration” for more information about application configuration.

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'.

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:

         @Provider
         @Produces("text/plain")
         @Consumes("text/plain")
         public class DefaultTextPlain implements MessageBodyReader, MessageBodyWriter {

            public boolean isReadable(Class type, Type genericType, Annotation[] annotations, MediaType mediaType) {
               // StringTextStar should pick up strings
               return !String.class.equals(type) && TypeConverter.isConvertable(type);
            }

            public Object readFrom(Class type, Type genericType, Annotation[] annotations, MediaType mediaType, MultivaluedMap httpHeaders, InputStream entityStream) throws IOException, WebApplicationException {
               InputStream delegate = NoContent.noContentCheck(httpHeaders, entityStream);
               String value = ProviderHelper.readString(delegate, mediaType);
               return TypeConverter.getType(type, value);
            }

            public boolean isWriteable(Class type, Type genericType, Annotation[] annotations, MediaType mediaType) {
               // StringTextStar should pick up strings
               return !String.class.equals(type) && !type.isArray();
            }

            public long getSize(Object o, Class type, Type genericType, Annotation[] annotations, MediaType mediaType) {
               String charset = mediaType.getParameters().get("charset");
               if (charset != null)
                  try {
                     return o.toString().getBytes(charset).length;
                  } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
                     // Use default encoding.
                  }
               return o.toString().getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8).length;
            }

            public void writeTo(Object o, Class type, Type genericType, Annotation[] annotations, MediaType mediaType, MultivaluedMap httpHeaders, OutputStream entityStream) throws IOException, WebApplicationException {
               String charset = mediaType.getParameters().get("charset");
               if (charset == null) entityStream.write(o.toString().getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
               else entityStream.write(o.toString().getBytes(charset));
            }
         }
      

Note that in order to support Async IO, you need to implement the AsyncMessageBodyWriter interface, which requires you to implement this extra method:

         @Provider
         @Produces("text/plain")
         @Consumes("text/plain")
         public class DefaultTextPlain implements MessageBodyReader, AsyncMessageBodyWriter {
            // ...
            public CompletionStage<Void> asyncWriteTo(Object o, Class type, Type genericType, Annotation[] annotations, MediaType mediaType, MultivaluedMap httpHeaders, AsyncOutputStream entityStream) {
               String charset = mediaType.getParameters().get("charset");
               if (charset == null)
                  return entityStream.asyncWrite(o.toString().getBytes(StandardCharsets.UTF_8));
               else
                  return entityStream.asyncWrite(o.toString().getBytes(charset));
            }
         }
      

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&#47;* > *&#47;*)
    * 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;

    ...

}

XML document parsers are subject to a form of attack known as the XXE (Xml eXternal Entity) Attack (http://www.securiteam.com/securitynews/6D0100A5PU.html), in which expanding an external entity causes an unsafe file to be loaded. For example, the document

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE foo
[<!ENTITY xxe SYSTEM "file:///etc/passwd">]>
<search>
    <user>bill</user>
    <file>&xxe;<file>
</search>

could cause the passwd file to be loaded.

By default, RESTEasy's built-in unmarshaller for org.w3c.dom.Document documents will not expand external entities, replacing them by the empty string instead. It can be configured to replace external entities by values defined in the DTD by setting the parameter

resteasy.document.expand.entity.references

to "true". If configured in the web.xml file, it would be:

<context-param>
    <param-name>resteasy.document.expand.entity.references</param-name>
    <param-value>true</param-value>
</context-param>

See Section 3.4, “Configuration” for more information about application configuration.

Another way of dealing with the problem is by prohibiting DTDs, which RESTEasy does by default. This behavior can be changed by setting the parameter

resteasy.document.secure.disableDTDs

to "false".

Documents are also subject to Denial of Service Attacks when buffers are overrun by large entities or too many attributes. For example, if a DTD defined the following entities

<!ENTITY foo 'foo'>
<!ENTITY foo1 '&foo;&foo;&foo;&foo;&foo;&foo;&foo;&foo;&foo;&foo;'>
<!ENTITY foo2 '&foo1;&foo1;&foo1;&foo1;&foo1;&foo1;&foo1;&foo1;&foo1;&foo1;'>
<!ENTITY foo3 '&foo2;&foo2;&foo2;&foo2;&foo2;&foo2;&foo2;&foo2;&foo2;&foo2;'>
<!ENTITY foo4 '&foo3;&foo3;&foo3;&foo3;&foo3;&foo3;&foo3;&foo3;&foo3;&foo3;'>
<!ENTITY foo5 '&foo4;&foo4;&foo4;&foo4;&foo4;&foo4;&foo4;&foo4;&foo4;&foo4;'>
<!ENTITY foo6 '&foo5;&foo5;&foo5;&foo5;&foo5;&foo5;&foo5;&foo5;&foo5;&foo5;'>

then the expansion of &foo6; would result in 1,000,000 foos. By default, RESTEasy will limit the number of expansions and the number of attributes per entity. The exact behavior depends on the underlying parser. The limits can be turned off by setting the parameter

resteasy.document.secure.processing.feature

to "false".

The JAX-RS specification says

When writing responses, implementations SHOULD respect application-supplied character
set metadata and SHOULD use UTF-8 if a character set is not specified by the application
or if the application specifies a character set that is unsupported.

On the other hand, the HTTP specification says

When no explicit charset parameter is provided by the sender, media subtypes of the
"text" type are defined to have a default charset value of "ISO-8859-1" when received
via HTTP. Data in character sets other than "ISO-8859-1" or its subsets MUST be labeled
with an appropriate charset value.

It follows that, in the absence of a character set specified by a resource or resource method, RESTEasy SHOULD use UTF-8 as the character set for text media types, and, if it does, it MUST add an explicit charset parameter to the Content-Type response header. RESTEasy started adding the explicit charset parameter in releases 3.1.2.Final and 3.0.22.Final, and that new behavior could cause some compatibility problems. To specify the previous behavior, in which UTF-8 was used for text media types, but the explicit charset was not appended, the parameter "resteasy.add.charset" may be set to "false". It defaults to "true".

Note. By "text" media types, we mean

  • a media type with type "text" and any subtype;
  • a media type with type ""application" and subtype beginning with "xml".

The latter set includes "application/xml-external-parsed-entity" and "application/xml-dtd".

As required by the specification, RESTEasy JAX-RS includes support for (un)marshalling JAXB annotated classes. RESTEasy provides multiple JAXB Providers to address some subtle differences between classes generated by XJC and classes which are simply annotated with @XmlRootElement, or working with JAXBElement classes directly.

For the most part, developers using the JAX-RS API, the selection of which provider is invoked will be completely transparent. For developers wishing to access the providers directly (which most folks won't need to do), this document describes which provider is best suited for different configurations.

A JAXB Provider is selected by RESTEasy when a parameter or return type is an object that is annotated with JAXB annotations (such as @XmlRootEntity or @XmlType) or if the type is a JAXBElement. Additionally, the resource class or resource method will be annotated with either a @Consumes or @Produces annotation and contain one or more of the following values:

  • text/*+xml
  • application/*+xml
  • application/*+fastinfoset
  • application/*+json

RESTEasy will select a different provider based on the return type or parameter type used in the resource. This section describes how the selection process works.

@XmlRootEntity When a class is annotated with a @XmlRootElement annotation, RESTEasy will select the JAXBXmlRootElementProvider. This provider handles basic marshaling and unmarshalling of custom JAXB entities.

@XmlType Classes which have been generated by XJC will most likely not contain an @XmlRootEntity annotation. In order for these classes to marshalled, they must be wrapped within a JAXBElement instance. This is typically accomplished by invoking a method on the class which serves as the XmlRegistry and is named ObjectFactory.

The JAXBXmlTypeProvider provider is selected when the class is annotated with an XmlType annotation and not an XmlRootElement annotation.

This provider simplifies this task by attempting to locate the XmlRegistry for the target class. By default, a JAXB implementation will create a class called ObjectFactory and is located in the same package as the target class. When this class is located, it will contain a "create" method that takes the object instance as a parameter. For example, if the target type is called "Contact", then the ObjectFactory class will have a method:

public JAXBElement createContact(Contact value) {..

JAXBElement<?> If your resource works with the JAXBElement class directly, the RESTEasy runtime will select the JAXBElementProvider. This provider examines the ParameterizedType value of the JAXBElement in order to select the appropriate JAXBContext.

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

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

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;
    }
}

As a consumer of XML datasets, JAXB is subject to a form of attack known as the XXE (Xml eXternal Entity) Attack (http://www.securiteam.com/securitynews/6D0100A5PU.html), in which expanding an external entity causes an unsafe file to be loaded. Preventing the expansion of external entities is discussed in Section 21.4, “Configuring Document Marshalling”. The same parameter,

resteasy.document.expand.entity.references

applies to JAXB unmarshallers as well.

Section 21.4, “Configuring Document Marshalling” also discusses the prohibition of DTDs and the imposition of limits on entity expansion and the number of attributes per element. The parameters

resteasy.document.secure.disableDTDs

and

resteasy.document.secure.processing.feature

discussed there, and their default values, also apply to the representation of JAXB objects.

From W3.org (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4287):

"Atom is an XML-based document format that describes lists of related information known as "feeds". Feeds are composed of a number of items, known as "entries", each with an extensible set of attached metadata. For example, each entry has a title. The primary use case that Atom addresses is the syndication of Web content such as weblogs and news headlines to Web sites as well as directly to user agents."

Atom is the next-gen RSS feed. Although it is used primarily for the syndication of blogs and news, many are starting to use this format as the envelope for Web Services, for example, distributed notifications, job queues, or simply a nice format for sending or receiving data in bulk from a service.

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);
    }
}

RESTEasy supports integration with the Jackson project. For more on Jackson 2, see http://wiki.fasterxml.com/JacksonHome. Besides JAXB like APIs, it has a JavaBean based model, described at http://wiki.fasterxml.com/JacksonDataBinding, which allows you to easily marshal Java objects to and from JSON. RESTEasy integrates with the JavaBean model. While Jackson does come with its own JAX-RS integration, RESTEasy expanded it a little, as decribed below.

NOTE. The resteasy-jackson-provider module, which is based on the outdated Jackson 1.9.x, is currently deprecated, and will be removed in a release subsequent to 3.1.0.Final. The resteasy-jackson2-provider module is based on Jackson 2.

If you're using Jackson, RESTEasy has JSONP that you can turn on by adding the provider org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.jackson.JacksonJsonpInterceptor (Jackson2JsonpInterceptor if you're using the Jackson2 provider) to your deployments. If the media type of the response is json and a callback query parameter is given, the response will be a javascript snippet with a method call of the method defined by the callback parameter. For example:

GET /resources/stuff?callback=processStuffResponse

will produce this response:

processStuffResponse(<nomal JSON body>)

This supports the default behavior of jQuery. To enable JacksonJsonpInterceptor in WildFly, you need to import annotations from org.jboss.resteasy.resteasy-jackson-provider module using jboss-deployment-structure.xml:

<jboss-deployment-structure>
  <deployment>
    <dependencies>
      <module name="org.jboss.resteasy.resteasy-jackson-provider" annotations="true"/>
    </dependencies>
  </deployment>
</jboss-deployment-structure>

You can change the name of the callback parameter by setting the callbackQueryParameter property.

JacksonJsonpInterceptor can wrap the response into a try-catch block:

try{processStuffResponse(<normal JSON body>)}catch(e){}

You can enable this feature by setting the resteasy.jsonp.silent property to true

Note. Because JSONP can be used in Cross Site Scripting Inclusion (XSSI) attacks, Jackson2JsonpInterceptor is disabled by default. Two steps are necessary to enable it:

  1. As noted above, Jackson2JsonpInterceptor must be included in the deployment. For example, a service file META-INF/services/javax.ws.rs.ext.Providers with the line
    org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.jackson.Jackson2JsonpInterceptor
    
    may be included on the classpath
  2. Also, the parameter parameter "resteasy.jsonp.enable" must be set to "true". [See Section 3.4, “Configuration” for more information about application configuration.]

In Jackson2 , there is new feature JsonFilter to allow annotate class with @JsonFilter and doing dynamic filtering. Here is an example which defines mapping from "nameFilter" to filter instances and filter bean properties when serilize to json format:

@JsonFilter(value="nameFilter")
public class Jackson2Product {
    protected String name;
    protected int id;
    public Jackson2Product() {
    }
    public Jackson2Product(final int id, final String name) {
        this.id = id;
        this.name = name;
    }
    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }
    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
    public int getId() {
        return id;
    }
    public void setId(int id) {
        this.id = id;
    }
}

@JsonFilter annotates resource class to filter out some property not to serialize in the json response. To map the filter id and instance we need to create another jackson class to add the id and filter instance map:


public class ObjectFilterModifier extends ObjectWriterModifier {
	public ObjectFilterModifier() {
	}
	@Override
	public ObjectWriter modify(EndpointConfigBase<?> endpoint,
			MultivaluedMap<String, Object> httpHeaders, Object valueToWrite,
			ObjectWriter w, JsonGenerator jg) throws IOException {

		FilterProvider filterProvider = new SimpleFilterProvider().addFilter(
				"nameFilter",
				SimpleBeanPropertyFilter.filterOutAllExcept("name"));
		return w.with(filterProvider);

	}
}

Here the method modify() will take care of filtering all properties except "name" property before write. To make this work, we need let RESTEasy know this mapping info. This can be easily set in a WriterInterceptor using Jackson's ObjectWriterInjector:


@Provider
public class JsonFilterWriteInterceptor implements WriterInterceptor{

	private ObjectFilterModifier modifier = new ObjectFilterModifier();
	@Override
	public void aroundWriteTo(WriterInterceptorContext context)
			throws IOException, WebApplicationException {
		//set a threadlocal modifier
	    ObjectWriterInjector.set(modifier);
		context.proceed();
	}

}

Alternatively, Jackson's documentation suggest doing the same in a servlet filter; that however potentially leads to issues on RESTEasy, as the ObjectFilterModifier ends up being stored using a ThreadLocal object and there's no guarantee the same thread serving the servlet filter will be running the resource endpoint execution too. So, for the servlet filter scenario, RESTEasy offers its own injector that relies on the current thread context classloader for carrying over the specified modifier:


public class ObjectWriterModifierFilter implements Filter {
	private static ObjectFilterModifier modifier = new ObjectFilterModifier();

	@Override
	public void init(FilterConfig filterConfig) throws ServletException {
	}

	@Override
	public void doFilter(ServletRequest request, ServletResponse response,
			FilterChain chain) throws IOException, ServletException {
		ResteasyObjectWriterInjector.set(Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader(), modifier);
		chain.doFilter(request, response);
	}

	@Override
	public void destroy() {
	}

}

No, this is not the JSONP you are thinking of! JSON-P is a new Java EE 7 JSON parsing API. Horrible name for a new JSON parsing API! What were they thinking? Anyways, RESTEasy has a provider for it. If you are using WildFly, it is required by Java EE 7 so you will have it automatically bundled. Otherwise, use this maven dependency.

<dependency>
   <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
   <artifactId>resteasy-json-p-provider</artifactId>
   <version>4.5.2.Final</version>
</dependency>

It has built in support for JsonObject, JsonArray, and JsonStructure as request or response entities. It should not conflict with Jackson if you have that in your path too.

RESTEasy has rich support for the "multipart/*" and "multipart/form-data" mime types. The multipart mime format is used to pass lists of content bodies. Multiple content bodies are embedded in one message. "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.

RESTEasy provides a custom API for reading and writing multipart types as well as marshalling arbitrary List (for any multipart type) and Map (multipart/form-data only) objects

When writing a JAX-RS service, RESTEasy provides an interface that allows you to read in any multipart mime type:

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

import java.util.List;

public interface MultipartInput {

   List<InputPart> getParts();

   String getPreamble();

   /**
    * Call this method to delete any temporary files created from unmarshalling this multipart message
    * Otherwise they will be deleted on Garbage Collection or JVM exit.
    */
   void close();
}

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:

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

import javax.ws.rs.core.GenericType;
import javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType;
import javax.ws.rs.core.MultivaluedMap;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.lang.reflect.Type;

/**
 * Represents one part of a multipart message.
 */
public interface InputPart {
   /**
    * If no content-type header is sent in a multipart message part
    * "text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1" is assumed.
    * <p>
    * This can be overwritten by setting a different String value in
    * {@link org.jboss.resteasy.spi.HttpRequest#setAttribute(String, Object)}
    * with this ("resteasy.provider.multipart.inputpart.defaultContentType")
    * String as key. It should be done in a
    * {@link javax.ws.rs.container.ContainerRequestFilter}.
    * </p>
    */
   String DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE_PROPERTY = "resteasy.provider.multipart.inputpart.defaultContentType";

   /**
    * If there is a content-type header without a charset parameter, charset=US-ASCII
    * is assumed.
    * <p>
    * This can be overwritten by setting a different String value in
    * {@link org.jboss.resteasy.spi.HttpRequest#setAttribute(String, Object)}
    * with this ("resteasy.provider.multipart.inputpart.defaultCharset")
    * String as key. It should be done in a
    * {@link javax.ws.rs.container.ContainerRequestFilter}.
    * </p>
    */
   String DEFAULT_CHARSET_PROPERTY = "resteasy.provider.multipart.inputpart.defaultCharset";

   /**
    * @return headers of this part
    */
   MultivaluedMap<String, String> getHeaders();

   String getBodyAsString() throws IOException;

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

   <T> T getBody(GenericType<T> type) throws IOException;

   /**
    * @return "Content-Type" of this part
    */
   MediaType getMediaType();

   /**
    * @return true if the Content-Type was resolved from the message, false if
    *         it was resolved from the server default
    */
   boolean isContentTypeFromMessage();

   /**
    * Change the media type of the body part before you extract it.  Useful for specifying a charset.
    *
    * @param mediaType media type
    */
   void setMediaType(MediaType mediaType);
}}

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.

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 MultipartRelatedInput

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

import java.util.Map;

/**
 * Represents a multipart/related (RFC2387) incoming mime message. A
 * multipart/related message is used to hold a root or start part and other
 * parts which are referenced from the root part. All parts have a unique id.
 * The type and the id of the start part is presented in parameters in the
 * message content-type header.
 */
public interface MultipartRelatedInput extends MultipartInput {

   /**
    * The type parameter as it was read from the content-type header of the
    * multipart/related message. A well formed multipart/related message always
    * has this parameter. This is the type of the root part of the message. If
    * a content-type header is presented in the root part as well it should
    * hold the same value.
    *
    * @return the type parameter of the content-type header of the message,
    *         null if there was no such parameter
    */
   String getType();

   /**
    * A start parameter is not mandatory in a message. If it is presented it
    * holds the id of the root part.
    *
    * @return the start parameter of the content-type header of the message,
    *         null if there was no such parameter
    */
   String getStart();

   /**
    * Optional.
    *
    * @return the start-info parameter of the content-type header of the
    *         message, null if there was no such parameter
    */
   String getStartInfo();

   /**
    * @return the root part of the message. If a start parameter was set in the
    *         message header the part with that id is returned. If no start
    *         parameter was set the first part is returned.
    */
   InputPart getRootPart();

   /**
    * @return a map holding all parts with their unique id-s as keys. The root
    *         part and the related parts too.
    */
   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:

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

   public OutputPart addPart(Object entity, MediaType mediaType, String filename);

   public OutputPart addPart(Object entity, MediaType mediaType, String filename, boolean utf8Encode);

   public OutputPart addPart(Object entity, GenericType<?> type, MediaType mediaType);

   public OutputPart addPart(Object entity, GenericType<?> type, MediaType mediaType, String filename);

   public OutputPart addPart(Object entity, GenericType<?> type, MediaType mediaType, String filename, boolean utf8Encode);

   public OutputPart addPart(Object entity, Class<?> type, Type genericType, MediaType mediaType);

   public OutputPart addPart(Object entity, Class<?> type, Type genericType, MediaType mediaType, String filename);

   public OutputPart addPart(Object entity, Class<?> type, Type genericType, MediaType mediaType, String filename, boolean utf8Encode);

   public List<OutputPart> getParts();

   public String getBoundary();

   public void setBoundary(String boundary);
}
Each part is represented by an OutputPart interface:
public class OutputPart {
   public OutputPart(final Object entity, final Class<?> type, final Type genericType, final MediaType mediaType);

   public OutputPart(final Object entity, final Class<?> type, final Type genericType, final MediaType mediaType, final String filename);

   public OutputPart(final Object entity, final Class<?> type, final Type genericType, final MediaType mediaType, final String filename, final boolean utf8Encode);

   public MultivaluedMap<String, Object> getHeaders();

   public Object getEntity();

   public Class<?> getType();

   public Type getGenericType();

   public MediaType getMediaType();

   public String getFilename();

   public boolean isUtf8Encode();
}

From the above definitions we can see that the output part can accept parameter called utf8Encode, and if you set this to true then the underlying AbstractMultipartFormDataWriter will process the filename according to rfc5987:

private String getFilename(OutputPart part) {
  String filename = part.getFilename();
  if (filename == null) {
     return "";
  } else {
     if (part.isUtf8Encode()) {
        String encodedFilename = filename;
        try {
           encodedFilename = URLEncoder.encode(filename, "UTF-8");
           // append encoding charset into the value if and only if encoding was needed
           if (!encodedFilename.equals(filename)) {
           // encoding was needed, so per rfc5987 we have to prepend charset
              return "; filename*=utf-8''" + encodedFilename.replaceAll("\\+", "%20");
           }
        } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
           // should not happen
        }
     }
     return "; filename=\"" + filename + "\"";
  }
}

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;
    }
}

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()

    public Map<String, List<OutputPart>> getFormDataMap()
}

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;
    }
}

When using form-data format the named content can be a list of OutputPart objects as long as each object in the named list contains a uniform object and media type. In the example below, we are sending back a "multipart/form-data" format which consists of two named list of objects, bill and monica:

@Path("/form")
public class MyService {
   @GET
   @Produces("multipart/form-data")
   public MultipartFormDataOutput get() {
      MultipartFormDataOutput output = new MultipartFormDataOutput();
      output.addPart("smith", new Customer("Joe Smith"), MediaType.APPLICATION_XML_TYPE);
      output.addPart("monica", new Employee("monica"), MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_TYPE);
      output.addPart("smith", new Customer("Deb Smith"), MediaType.APPLICATION_XML_TYPE);
      output.addPart("smith", new Customer("Buba Smith"), MediaType.APPLICATION_XML_TYPE);
      return output;
   }
}

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...
    }
}

In addition to the XML data format, you can also use JSON formatted data to represent your POJO classes. To achieve this goal, you need to plug in a JSON provider into your project. For example, you can add RESTEasy Jackson2 Provider into your project's dependency scope:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
    <artifactId>resteasy-jackson2-provider</artifactId>
    <version>${resteasy.ver}</version>
</dependency>

And then you can write an ordinary POJO class, which Jackson2 can automatically serialize/deserialize it in JSON format:

public class JsonUser {
   private String name;

   public JsonUser() {
   }

   public JsonUser(final String name) {
      this.name = name;
   }

   public String getName() {
      return name;
   }

   public void setName(String name) {
      this.name = name;
   }
}

The resource class can be written like this:

import org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.multipart.MultipartForm;
import org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.multipart.PartType;

import javax.ws.rs.Consumes;
import javax.ws.rs.FormParam;
import javax.ws.rs.PUT;
import javax.ws.rs.Path;

@Path("/")
public class JsonFormResource {

    public JsonFormResource() {
    }

    public static class Form {

    @FormParam("user")
    @PartType("application/json")
    private JsonUser user;

    public Form() {
    }

    public Form(final JsonUser user) {
    this.user = user;
    }

    public JsonUser getUser() {
      return user;
    }
    }

    @PUT
    @Path("form/class")
    @Consumes("multipart/form-data")
    public String putMultipartForm(@MultipartForm Form form) {
         return form.getUser().getName();
    }
}

As the code shown above, you can see the PartType of JsonUser is marked as "application/json", and it's included in the "@MultipartForm Form" class instance.

To send request to the resource method, you need to send JSON formatted data that is corresponding with the JsonUser class. The easiest to do this is to use a proxy class that has the same definition like the resource class. Here is the sample code of the proxy class that is corresponding with the JsonFormResource class:

import org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.providers.multipart.MultipartForm;

import javax.ws.rs.Consumes;
import javax.ws.rs.PUT;
import javax.ws.rs.Path;

@Path("/")
public interface JsonForm {

@PUT
@Path("form/class")
@Consumes("multipart/form-data")
  String putMultipartForm(@MultipartForm JsonFormResource.Form form);
}

And then you can use the proxy class above to send request to the resource method correctly. Here is the sample code:

ResteasyClient client = (ResteasyClient)ClientBuilder.newClient();
...
JsonForm proxy = client.target("your_request_url_address").proxy(JsonForm.class);
String name = proxy.putMultipartForm(new JsonFormResource.Form(new JsonUser("bill")));
...

And if your client side has Jackson2 provider included, your request will be marshaled correctly, and your JsonUser data will be converted into JSON format and then send to the server side. You can also use hand-crafted JSON data as your request and send it to server side, but you have to make sure the request data is in correct form then.

RESTEasy supports Xop messages packaged as multipart/related. What does this mean? If you have a JAXB annotated POJO that also holds some binary content you may choose to send it in such a way where the binary does not need to be encoded in any way (neither base64 neither hex). This results in faster transport while still using the convenient POJO. More about Xop can be read here: http://www.w3.org/TR/xop10/. Now lets see an example:

First we have a JAXB annotated POJO to work with. @XmlMimeType tells JAXB the mime type of the binary content (its not required to do XOP packaging but it is recommended to be set if you know the exact type):

@XmlRootElement
@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)
public static class Xop {

    private Customer bill;
    private Customer monica;

    @XmlMimeType(MediaType.APPLICATION_OCTET_STREAM)
    private byte[] myBinary;

    @XmlMimeType(MediaType.APPLICATION_OCTET_STREAM)
    private DataHandler myDataHandler;

    // methods, other fields ...
}

In the above POJO myBinary and myDataHandler will be processed as binary attachments while the whole Xop object will be sent as xml (in the places of the binaries only their references will be generated). javax.activation.DataHandler is the most general supported type so if you need an java.io.InputStream or a javax.activation.DataSource you need to go with the DataHandler. Some other special types are supported too: java.awt.Image and javax.xml.transform.Source. Let's assume that Customer is also JAXB friendly POJO in the above example (of course it can also have binary parts). Now lets see a an example Java client that sends this:

// our client interface:
@Path("mime")
public static interface MultipartClient {
    @Path("xop")
    @PUT
    @Consumes(MultipartConstants.MULTIPART_RELATED)
    public void putXop(@XopWithMultipartRelated Xop bean);
}

// Somewhere using it:
{
    MultipartClient client = ProxyFactory.create(MultipartClient.class,
        "http://www.example.org");
    Xop xop = new Xop(new Customer("bill"), new Customer("monica"),
        "Hello Xop World!".getBytes("UTF-8"),
        new DataHandler(new ByteArrayDataSource("Hello Xop World!".getBytes("UTF-8"),
        MediaType.APPLICATION_OCTET_STREAM)));
    client.putXop(xop);
}

We used @Consumes(MultipartConstants.MULTIPART_RELATED) to tell RESTEasy that we want to send multipart/related packages (that's the container format that will hold our Xop message). We used @XopWithMultipartRelated to tell RESTEasy that we want to make Xop messages. So we have a POJO and a client service that is willing to send it. All we need now a server that can read it:

@Path("/mime")
public class XopService {
    @PUT
    @Path("xop")
    @Consumes(MultipartConstants.MULTIPART_RELATED)
    public void putXopWithMultipartRelated(@XopWithMultipartRelated Xop xop) {
        // do very important things here
    }
}

We used @Consumes(MultipartConstants.MULTIPART_RELATED) to tell RESTEasy that we want to read multipart/related packages. We used @XopWithMultipartRelated to tell RESTEasy that we want to read Xop messages. Of course we could also produce Xop return values but we would than also need to annotate that and use a Produce annotation, too.

JAX-RS 2.1 adds more asynchronous processing support in both the Client and the Server API. The specification adds a Reactive programming style to the Client side and Server-Sent Events (SSE) protocol support to both client and server.

SSE is part of HTML standard, currently supported by many browsers. It is a server push technology, which provides a way to establish a one-way channel to continuously send data to clients. SSE events are pushed to the client via a long-running HTTP connection. In case of lost connection, clients can retrieve missed events by setting a "Last-Event-ID" HTTP header in a new request.

SSE stream has text/event-stream media type and contains multiple SSE events. SSE event is a data structure encoded with UTF-8 and contains fields and comment. The field can be event, data, id, retry and other kinds of field will be ignored.

From JAX-RS 2.1, Server-sent Events APIs are introduced to support sending, receiving and broadcasting SSE events.

What if you have a class where valueOf()or this string constructor don't exist or are inappropriate for an HTTP request? JAX-RS 2.0 has the javax.ws.rs.ext.ParamConverterProvider to help in this situation.

A ParamConverterProvider is a provider defined as follows:

public interface ParamConverterProvider {

   public <T> ParamConverter<T> getConverter(Class<T> rawType, Type genericType, Annotation annotations[]);
}
   

where a ParamConverter is defined:

public interface ParamConverter<T> {
   ...
   public T fromString(String value);
   public String toString(T value);
}
   

For example, consider DateParamConverterProvider and DateParamConverter:

@Provider
public class DateParamConverterProvider implements ParamConverterProvider {

   @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
   @Override
   public <T> ParamConverter<T> getConverter(Class<T> rawType, Type genericType, Annotation[] annotations) {
      if (rawType.isAssignableFrom(Date.class)) {
         return (ParamConverter<T>) new DateParamConverter();
      }
      return null;
   }
}

public class DateParamConverter implements ParamConverter<Date> {

   public static final String DATE_PATTERN = "yyyyMMdd";

   @Override
   public Date fromString(String param) {
      try {
         return new SimpleDateFormat(DATE_PATTERN).parse(param.trim());
      } catch (ParseException e) {
         throw new BadRequestException(e);
      }
   }

   @Override
   public String toString(Date date) {
      return new SimpleDateFormat(DATE_PATTERN).format(date);
   }
}
   

Sending a Date in the form of a query, e.g., "?date=20161217" will cause the string "20161217" to be converted to a Date on the server.

In addition to the JAX-RS javax.ws.rs.ext.ParamConverterProvider, RESTEasy also has its own org.jboss.resteasy.StringParameterUnmarshaller, defined

public interface StringParameterUnmarshaller<T>
{
   void setAnnotations(Annotation[] annotations);

   T fromString(String str);
}
   

It is similar to javax.ws.rs.ext.ParamConverter except that

  • it converts only from Strings;
  • it is configured with the annotations on the injected parameter, which allows for fine-grained control over the injection; and
  • it is bound to a given parameter by an annotation that is annotated with the meta-annotation org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.StringParameterUnmarshallerBinder:
@Target({ElementType.ANNOTATION_TYPE})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface StringParameterUnmarshallerBinder
{
   Class<? extends StringParameterUnmarshaller> value();
}
   

For example,

   @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
   @StringParameterUnmarshallerBinder(TestDateFormatter.class)
   public @interface TestDateFormat {
      String value();
   }

   public static class TestDateFormatter implements StringParameterUnmarshaller<Date> {
      private SimpleDateFormat formatter;

      public void setAnnotations(Annotation[] annotations) {
         TestDateFormat format = FindAnnotation.findAnnotation(annotations, TestDateFormat.class);
         formatter = new SimpleDateFormat(format.value());
      }

      public Date fromString(String str) {
         try {
            return formatter.parse(str);
         } catch (ParseException e) {
            throw new RuntimeException(e);
         }
      }
   }
   
   @Path("/")
   public static class TestResource {

      @GET
      @Produces("text/plain")
      @Path("/datetest/{date}")
      public String get(@PathParam("date") @TestDateFormat("MM-dd-yyyy") Date date) {
         Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
         c.setTime(date);
         return date.toString();
      }
   }
   

Note that the annotation @StringParameterUnmarshallerBinder on the annotation @TestDateFormat binds the formatter TestDateFormatter to a parameter annotated with @TestDateFormat. In this example, TestDateFormatter is used to format the Date parameter. Note also that the parameter "MM-dd-yyyy" to @TestDateFormat is accessible from TestDateFormatter.setAnnotations().

For parameters and properties annotated with @CookieParam, @HeaderParam, @MatrixParam, @PathParam, or @QueryParam, the JAX-RS specification [https://jcp.org/aboutJava/communityprocess/final/jsr339/index.html] allows conversion as defined in the Javadoc of the corresponding annotation. In general, the following types are supported:

  1. Types for which a ParamConverter is available via a registered ParamConverterProvider. See Javadoc for these classes for more information.
  2. Primitive types.
  3. Types that have a constructor that accepts a single String argument.
  4. Types that have a static method named valueOf or fromString with a single String argument that return an instance of the type. If both methods are present then valueOf MUST be used unless the type is an enum in which case fromString MUST be used.
  5. List<T>, Set<T>, or SortedSet<T>, where T satisfies 3 or 4 above.

Items 1, 3, and 4 have been discussed above, and item 2 is obvious. Note that item 5 allows for collections of parameters. How these collections are expressed in HTTP messages depends, by default, on the particular kind of parameter. In most cases, the notation for collections is based on convention rather than a specification.

Deriving a collection from path segments is somewhat less natural than it is for other parameters, but JAX-RS supports the injection of multiple javax.ws.rs.core.PathSegments. There are a couple of ways of obtaining multiple PathSegments. One is through the use of multiple path variables with the same name. For example, the result of calling testTwoSegmentsArray() and testTwoSegmentsList() in

@Path("")
public static class TestResource {

   @GET
   @Path("{segment}/{other}/{segment}/array")
   public Response getTwoSegmentsArray(@PathParam("segment") PathSegment[] segments) {
      System.out.println("array segments: " + segments.length);
      return Response.ok().build();
   }
   
   @GET
   @Path("{segment}/{other}/{segment}/list")
   public Response getTwoSegmentsList(@PathParam("segment") List<PathSegment> segments) {
      System.out.println("list segments: " + segments.size());
      return Response.ok().build();
   }
}

...

   @Test
   public void testTwoSegmentsArray() throws Exception {
      Invocation.Builder request = client.target("http://localhost:8081/a/b/c/array").request();
      Response response = request.get();
      Assert.assertEquals(200, response.getStatus());
      response.close();
   }
   
   @Test
   public void testTwoSegmentsList() throws Exception {
      Invocation.Builder request = client.target("http://localhost:8081/a/b/c/list").request();
      Response response = request.get();
      Assert.assertEquals(200, response.getStatus());
      response.close();
   }
   

is

array segments: 2
list segments: 2
   

An alternative is to use a wildcard template parameter. For example, the output of calling testWildcardArray() and testWildcardList() in

@Path("")
public static class TestResource {

   @GET
   @Path("{segments:.*}/array")
   public Response getWildcardArray(@PathParam("segments") PathSegment[] segments) {
      System.out.println("array segments: " + segments.length);
      return Response.ok().build();
   }
   
   @GET
   @Path("{segments:.*}/list")
   public Response getWildcardList(@PathParam("segments") List<PathSegment> segments) {
      System.out.println("list segments: " + segments.size());
      return Response.ok().build();
   }
   
...

   @Test
   public void testWildcardArray() throws Exception {
      Invocation.Builder request = client.target("http://localhost:8081/a/b/c/array").request();
      Response response = request.get();
      response.close();
   }
   
   @Test
   public void testWildcardList() throws Exception {
      Invocation.Builder request = client.target("http://localhost:8081/a/b/c/list").request();
      Response response = request.get();
      response.close();
   }
   

is

array segments: 3
list segments: 3
   

In the JAX-RS semantics, a ParamConverter is supposed to convert a single String that represents an individual object. RESTEasy extends the semantics to allow a ParamConverter to parse the String representation of multiple objects and generate a List<T>, Set<T>, SortedSet<T>, array, or, indeed, any multivalued data structure whatever. First, consider the resource

@Path("queryParam")
public static class TestResource {

   @GET
   @Path("")
   public Response conversion(@QueryParam("q") List<String> list) {
      return Response.ok(stringify(list)).build();
   }
}

private static <T> String stringify(List<T> list) {
   StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
   for (T s : list) {
      sb.append(s).append(',');
   }
   return sb.toString();
}
   

Calling TestResource as follows, using the standard notation,

@Test
public void testQueryParamStandard() throws Exception {
   Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
   Invocation.Builder request = client.target("http://localhost:8081/queryParam?q=20161217&q=20161218&q=20161219").request();
   Response response = request.get();
   System.out.println("response: " + response.readEntity(String.class));
}
   

results in

response: 20161217,20161218,20161219,
   

Suppose, instead, that we want to use a comma separated notation. We can add

public static class MultiValuedParamConverterProvider implements ParamConverterProvider

   @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
   @Override
   public <T> ParamConverter<T> getConverter(Class<T> rawType, Type genericType, Annotation[] annotations) {
      if (List.class.isAssignableFrom(rawType)) {
         return (ParamConverter<T>) new MultiValuedParamConverter();
      }
      return null;
   }   
}

public static class MultiValuedParamConverter implements ParamConverter<List<?>> {

   @Override
   public List<?> fromString(String param) {
      if (param == null || param.trim().isEmpty()) {
         return null;
      }
      return parse(param.split(","));
   }

   @Override
   public String toString(List<?> list) {
      if (list == null || list.isEmpty()) {
         return null;
      }
      return stringify(list);
   }
   
   private static List<String> parse(String[] params) {
      List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();
      for (String param : params) {
         list.add(param);
      }
      return list;
   }
}
   

Now we can call

@Test
public void testQueryParamCustom() throws Exception {
   Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
   Invocation.Builder request = client.target("http://localhost:8081/queryParam?q=20161217,20161218,20161219").request();
   Response response = request.get();
   System.out.println("response: " + response.readEntity(String.class));
}
   

and get

response: 20161217,20161218,20161219,
   

Note that in this case, MultiValuedParamConverter.fromString() creates and returns an ArrayList, so TestResource.conversion() could be rewritten

@Path("queryParam")
public static class TestResource {

   @GET
   @Path("")
   public Response conversion(@QueryParam("q") ArrayList<String> list) {
      return Response.ok(stringify(list)).build();
   }
}
   

On the other hand, MultiValuedParamConverter could be rewritten to return a LinkList and the parameter list in TestResource.conversion() could be either a List or a LinkedList.

Finally, note that this extension works for arrays as well. For example,

  public static class Foo {
      private String foo;
      public Foo(String foo) {this.foo = foo;}
      public String getFoo() {return foo;}
   }
   
   public static class FooArrayParamConverter implements ParamConverter<Foo[]> {

      @Override
      public Foo[] fromString(String value)
      {
         String[] ss = value.split(",");
         Foo[] fs = new Foo[ss.length];
         int i = 0;
         for (String s : ss) {
            fs[i++] = new Foo(s);
         }
         return fs;
      }

      @Override
      public String toString(Foo[] values)
      {
         StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
         for (int i = 0; i < values.length; i++) {
            sb.append(values[i].getFoo()).append(",");
         }
         if (sb.length() > 0) {
            sb.deleteCharAt(sb.length() - 1);
         }
         return sb.toString();
      }
   }
   
   @Provider
   public static class FooArrayParamConverterProvider implements ParamConverterProvider {

      @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
      @Override
      public <T> ParamConverter<T> getConverter(Class<T> rawType, Type genericType, Annotation[] annotations) {
         if (rawType.equals(Foo[].class));
         return (ParamConverter<T>) new FooArrayParamConverter();
      }
   }
   
   @Path("")
   public static class ParamConverterResource {

      @GET
      @Path("test")
      public Response test(@QueryParam("foos") Foo[] foos) {
         return Response.ok(new FooArrayParamConverter().toString(foos)).build();
      }
   }
   

RESTEasy includes two built-in ParamConverters in the resteasy-jaxrs module, one for Collections:

   org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.MultiValuedCollectionParamConverter,

and one for arrays:

   org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.MultiValuedArrayParamConverter,

which implement the concepts in the previous section.

In particular, MultiValued*ParamConverter.fromString() can transform a string representation coming over the network into a Collection or array, and MultiValued*ParamConverter.toString() can be used by a client side proxy to transform Collections or arrays into a string representation.

String representations are determined by org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.Separator, a parameter annotation in the resteasy-core module:

@Target({ElementType.PARAMETER})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface Separator
{
   public String value() default "";
}

The value of Separator.value() is used to separate individual elements of a Collection or array. For example, a proxy implementing

@Path("path/separator/multi/{p}")
@GET
public String pathMultiSeparator(@PathParam("p") @Separator("-") List<String> ss); 

will turn

List<String> list = new ArrayList<String>();
list.add("abc");
list.add("xyz");
proxy.pathMultiSeparator(list);

and "path/separator/multi/{p}" into ".../path/separator/multi/abc-xyz". On the server side, the RESTEasy runtime will turn "abc-xyz" back into a list consisting of elements "abc" and "xyz" for

@Path("path/separator/multi/{p}")
@GET
public String pathMultiSeparator(@PathParam("p") @Separator("-") List<String> ss) {
   StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
   for (String s : ss) {
      sb.append(s);
      sb.append("|");
   }
   return sb.toString();
}

which will return "abc|xyz|".

In fact, the value of the Separator annotations may be a more general regular expression, which is passed to String.split(). For example, "[-,;]" tells the server side to break up a string using either "-", ",", or ";". On the client side, a string will be created using the first element, "-" in this case.

If a parameter is annotated with @Separator with no value, then the default value is

  • "," for a @HeaderParam, @MatrixParam, @PathParam, or @QueryParam, and
  • "-" for a @CookieParam.

The MultiValued*ParamConverters depend on existing facilities for handling the individual elements. On the server side, once it has parsed the incoming string into substrings, MultiValued*ParamConverter turns each substring into an Java object according to Section 3.2 "Fields and Bean Properties" of the JAX-RS specification. On the client side, MultiValued*ParamConverter turns a Java object into a string as follows:

  1. look for a ParamConverter;
  2. if there is no suitable ParamConverter and the parameter is labeled @HeaderParam, look for a HeaderDelegate; or
  3. call toString().

These ParamConverters are meant to be fairly general, but there are a number of restrictions:

  1. They don't handle nested Collections or arrays. That is, List<String> and String[] are OK, but List<List<String>> and String[][] are not.
  2. The regular expression used in Separator must match the regular expression
    "\\p{Punct}|\\[\\p{Punct}+\\]"
    
    That is, it must be either a single instance of a punctuation symbol, i.e., a symbol in the set
    !"#$%&'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\]^_`{|}~
    
    or a class of punctuation symbols like "[-,;]".
  3. For either of these ParamConverters to be available for use with a given parameter, that parameter must be annotated with @Separator.

There are also some logical restrictions:

  1. Cookie syntax, as specified in https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6265#section-4.1.1, assigns a meaning to ";", so it cannot be used as a separator.
  2. If a separator character appears in the content of an element, then there will be problems. For example, if "," is used as a separator, then, if a proxy sends the array ["a","b,c","d"], it will turn into the string "a,b,c,d" on the wire and be reconstituted on the server as four elements.

These built-in ParamConverters have the lowest priority, so any user supplied ParamConverters will be tried first.

You can build custom responses using the javax.ws.rs.core.Response and ResponseBuilder classes. If you want to do your own streaming, your entity response must be an implementation of javax.ws.rs.core.StreamingOutput. See the java doc for more information.

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:

Table 30.1. 

ExceptionHTTP CodeDescription
ReaderException400All exceptions thrown from MessageBodyReaders are wrapped within this exception. If there is no ExceptionMapper for the wrapped exception or if the exception isn't a WebApplicationException, then resteasy will return a 400 code by default.
WriterException500All exceptions thrown from MessageBodyWriters are wrapped within this exception. If there is no ExceptionMapper for the wrapped exception or if the exception isn't a WebApplicationException, then resteasy will return a 400 code by default.
o.j.r.plugins.providers.jaxb.JAXBUnmarshalException400The JAXB providers throw this exception on reads. They may be wrapping JAXBExceptions. This class extends ReaderException
o.j.r.plugins.providers.jaxb.JAXBMarshalException500The JAXB providers throw this exception on writes. They may be wrapping JAXBExceptions. This class extends WriterException
ApplicationExceptionN/AThis exception wraps all exceptions thrown from application code. It functions much in the same way as InvocationTargetException. If there is an ExceptionMapper for wrapped exception, then that is used to handle the request.
FailureN/AInternal RESTEasy. Not logged
LoggableFailureN/AInternal RESTEasy error. Logged
DefaultOptionsMethodExceptionN/AIf the user invokes HTTP OPTIONS and no JAX-RS method for it, RESTEasy provides a default behavior by throwing this exception
UnrecognizedPropertyExceptionHandler400A Jackson provider throws this exception when JSON data is determine to be invalid.

If you are scanning your path for JAX-RS annotated resource beans, your beans will be registered in per-request mode. This means an instance will be created per HTTP request served. Generally, you will need information from your environment. If you are running within a servlet container using the WAR-file distribution, in 1.0.0.Beta-2 and lower, you can only use the JNDI lookups to obtain references to Java EE resources and configuration information. In this case, define your EE configuration (i.e. ejb-ref, env-entry, persistence-context-ref, etc...) within web.xml of the resteasy WAR file. Then within your code do jndi lookups in the java:comp namespace. For example:

web.xml


<ejb-ref>
  <ejb-ref-name>ejb/foo</ejb-ref-name>
  ...
</ejb-ref>

resource code:

@Path("/")
public class MyBean {

   public Object getSomethingFromJndi() {
      new InitialContext.lookup("java:comp/ejb/foo");
   }
...
}

You can also manually configure and register your beans through the Registry. To do this in a WAR-based deployment, you need to write a specific ServletContextListener to do this. Within the listener, you can obtain a reference to the registry as follows:


public class MyManualConfig implements ServletContextListener
{
   public void contextInitialized(ServletContextEvent event)
   {

      Registry registry = (Registry) event.getServletContext().getAttribute(Registry.class.getName());

   }
...
}

Please also take a look at our Spring Integration as well as the Embedded Container's Spring Integration

RESTEasy supports (though not by default - see below) GZIP decompression. If properly configured, the client framework or a JAX-RS service, upon receiving a message body with a Content-Encoding of "gzip", will automatically decompress it. The client framework can (though not by default - see below) automatically set the Accept-Encoding header to be "gzip, deflate" so you do not have to set this header yourself.

RESTEasy also supports (though not by default - see below) automatic compression. If the client framework is sending a request or the server is sending a response with the Content-Encoding header set to "gzip", RESTEasy will (if properly configured) do the compression. So that you do not have to set the Content-Encoding header directly, you can use the @org.jboss.resteasy.annotation.GZIP annotation.

@Path("/")
public interface MyProxy {

   @Consumes("application/xml")
   @PUT
   public void put(@GZIP Order order);
}

In the above example, we tag the outgoing message body, order, to be gzip compressed. You can use the same annotation to tag server responses

@Path("/")
public class MyService {

   @GET
   @Produces("application/xml")
   @GZIP
   public String getData() {...}
}

Note. Decompression carries a risk of attack from a bad actor that can package an entity that will expand greatly. Consequently, RESTEasy disables GZIP compression / decompression by default.

There are three interceptors that are relevant to GZIP compression / decompression:

  1. org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.interceptors.GZIPDecodingInterceptor: If the Content-Encoding header is present and has the value "gzip", GZIPDecodingInterceptor will install an InputStream that decompresses the message body.
  2. org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.interceptors.GZIPEncodingInterceptor: If the Content-Encoding header is present and has the value "gzip", GZIPEncodingInterceptor will install an OutputStream that compresses the message body.
  3. org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.interceptors.AcceptEncodingGZIPFilter: If the Accept-Encoding header does not exist, AcceptEncodingGZIPFilter will add Accept-Encoding with the value "gzip, deflate". If the Accept-Encoding header exists but does not contain "gzip", AcceptEncodingGZIPFilter will append ", gzip". Note that enabling GZIP compression / decompression does not depend on the presence of this interceptor.

If GZIP decompression is enabled, an upper limit is imposed on the number of bytes GZIPDecodingInterceptor will extract from a compressed message body. The default limit is 10,000,000, but a different value can be configured. See below.

The interceptors may be enabled by including their classnames in a META-INF/services/javax.ws.rs.ext.Providers file on the classpath. The upper limit on deflated files may be configured by setting the parameter "resteasy.gzip.max.input". [See Section 3.4, “Configuration” for more information about application configuration.] If the limit is exceeded on the server side, GZIPDecodingInterceptor will return a Response with status 413 ("Request Entity Too Large") and a message specifying the upper limit.

Note. As of release 3.1.0.Final, the GZIP interceptors have moved from package org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.interceptors.encoding to org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.interceptors. and they should be named accordingly in javax.ws.rs.ext.Providers.

The designation of a compressible entity by the use of the @GZIP annotation is a built in, specific instance of a more general facility supported by RESTEasy. There are three components to this facility.

  1. The annotation org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.ContentEncoding is a "meta-annotation" used on other annotations to indicate that they represent a Content-Encoding. For example, @GZIP is defined
    @Target({ElementType.TYPE, ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.PARAMETER})
    @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
    @ContentEncoding("gzip")
    public @interface GZIP
    {
    }
          
    The value of @ContentEncoding indicates the represented Content-Encoding. For @GZIP it is "gzip".
  2. ClientContentEncodingAnnotationFeature and ServerContentEncodingAnnotationFeature, two DynamicFeatures in package org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.interceptors, examine resource methods for annotations decorated with @ContentEncoding.
  3. For each value found in a @ContentEncoding decorated annotation on a resource method, an instance of ClientContentEncodingAnnotationFilter or ServerContentEncodingAnnotationFilter, javax.ws.rs.ext.WriterInterceptors in package org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.interceptors, is registered. They are responsible for adding an appropriate Content-Encoding header. For example, ClientContentEncodingAnnotationFilter is defined
    @ConstrainedTo(RuntimeType.CLIENT)
    @Priority(Priorities.HEADER_DECORATOR)
    public class ClientContentEncodingAnnotationFilter implements WriterInterceptor
    {
       protected String encoding;
    
       public ClientContentEncodingAnnotationFilter(String encoding)
       {
          this.encoding = encoding;
       }
    
       @Override
       public void aroundWriteTo(WriterInterceptorContext context) throws IOException, WebApplicationException
       {
          context.getHeaders().putSingle(HttpHeaders.CONTENT_ENCODING, encoding);
          context.proceed();
       }
    }
          
    When it is created, ClientContentEncodingAnnotationFeature passes in the value to be used for Content-Encoding headers.

The annotation @GZIP is built into RESTEasy, but ClientContentEncodingAnnotationFeature and ServerContentEncodingAnnotationFeature will also recognize application defined annotations. For example,

   @Target({ElementType.TYPE, ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.PARAMETER})
   @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
   @ContentEncoding("compress")
   public @interface Compress
   {
   }
   
   @Path("")
   public static class TestResource {
      
      @GET
      @Path("a")
      @Compress
      public String a() {
         return "a";
      }
   }
   

If TestResource.a() is invoked as follows

   @Test
   public void testCompress() throws Exception
   {
      Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
      Invocation.Builder request = client.target("http://localhost:8081/a").request();
      request.acceptEncoding("gzip,compress");
      Response response = request.get();
      System.out.println("content-encoding: "+ response.getHeaderString("Content-Encoding"));
      client.close();
   }
   

the output will be

content-encoding: compress
   

RESTEasy has a ContainerRequestFilter that can be used to handle CORS preflight and actual requests. org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.interceptors.CorsFilter. You must allocate this and register it as a singleton provider from your Application class. See the javadoc or its various settings.

CorsFilter filter = new CorsFilter();
filter.getAllowedOrigins().add("http://localhost");

RESTEasy supports Range requests for java.io.File response entities.

   @Path("/")
   public class Resource {
      @GET
      @Path("file")
      @Produces("text/plain")
      public File getFile()
      {
         return file;
      }
   }

      Response response = client.target(generateURL("/file")).request()
              .header("Range", "1-4").get();
      Assert.assertEquals(response.getStatus(), 206);
      Assert.assertEquals(4, response.getLength());
      System.out.println("Content-Range: " + response.getHeaderString("Content-Range"));


      

RESTEasy provides numerous annotations and facilities to support HTTP caching semantics. Annotations to make setting Cache-Control headers easier and both server-side and client-side in-memory caches are available.

RESTEasy has the ability to set up a client-side, browser-like, cache. You can use it with the Client Proxy Framework, or with ordinary requests. 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 in which the BrowserCacheFeature is registered:

ResteasyWebTarget target = (ResteasyWebTarget) ClientBuilder.newClient().target("http://localhost:8081");
BrowserCacheFeature cacheFeature = new BrowserCacheFeature();
OrderServiceClient orderService = target.register(cacheFeature).proxy(OrderServiceClient.class);

BrowserCacheFeature will create a Resteasy LightweightBrowserCache by default. It is also possible to configure the cache, or install a completely different cache implementation:

ResteasyWebTarget target = (ResteasyWebTarget) ClientBuilder.newClient().target("http://localhost:8081");
LightweightBrowserCache cache = new LightweightBrowserCache();
cache.setMaxBytes(20);
BrowserCacheFeature cacheFeature = new BrowserCacheFeature();
cacheFeature.setCache(cache);
OrderServiceClient orderService = target.register(cacheFeature).proxy(OrderServiceClient.class); 

If you are using the standard JAX-RS client framework to make invocations rather than the proxy framework, it is just as easy:

ResteasyWebTarget target = (ResteasyWebTarget) ClientBuilder.newClient().target("http://localhost:8081/orders/{id}");
BrowserCacheFeature cacheFeature = new BrowserCacheFeature();
target.register(cacheFeature);
String rtn = target.resolveTemplate("id", "1").request().get(String.class);

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 parameters. 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>4.5.2.Final</version>
</dependency>

The next thing you should probably do is set up the Infinispan configuration. In your web.xml, it would look like


<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.

See Section 3.4, “Configuration” for more information about application configuration.

JAX-RS 2.0 has two different concepts for interceptions: Filters and Interceptors. Filters are mainly used to modify or process incoming and outgoing request headers or response headers. They execute before and after request and response processing.

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);
        }
    

It is possible to turn filters into asynchronous filters, if you need to suspend execution of your filter until a certain resource has become available. This turns the request asynchronous, but requires no change to your resource method declaration. In particular, synchronous and asynchronous resource methods continue to work as specified, regardless of whether or not a filter turned the request asynchronous. Similarly, one filter turning the request asynchronous requires no change in the declaration of further filters.

In order to turn a filter's execution asynchronous, you need to cast the ContainerRequestContext into a SuspendableContainerRequestContext (for pre/post request filters), or cast the ContainerResponseContext into a SuspendableContainerResponseContext (for response filters).

These context objects can turn the current filter's execution to asynchronous by calling the suspend() method. Once asynchronous, the filter chain is suspended, and will only resume after one of the following method is called on the context object:

abortWith(Response)
Terminate the filter chain, return the given Response to the client (only for ContainerRequestFilter).
resume()
Resume execution of the filter chain by calling the next filter.
resume(Throwable)
Abort execution of the filter chain by throwing the given exception. This behaves as if the filter were synchronous and threw the given exception.

You can also do async processing inside your AsyncWriterInterceptor (if you are using Async IO), which is the asynchronous-supporting equivalent to WriterInterceptor. In this case, you don't need to manually suspend or resume the request.

Asynchronous HTTP Request Processing is a relatively new technique that allows you to process a single HTTP request using non-blocking I/O and, if desired in separate threads. Some refer to it as COMET capabilities. The primary use case for Asynchronous HTTP is in the case where the client is polling the server for a delayed response. The usual example is an AJAX chat client where you want to push/pull from both the client and the server. These scenarios have the client blocking a long time on the server’s socket waiting for a new message. What happens in synchronous HTTP where the server is blocking on incoming and outgoing I/O is that you end up having a thread consumed per client connection. This eats up memory and valuable thread resources. Not such a big deal in 90% of applications (in fact using asynchronous processing may actually hurt your performance in most common scenarios), but when you start getting a lot of concurrent clients that are blocking like this, there’s a lot of wasted resources and your server does not scale that well.

The JAX-RS 2.0 specification has added asynchronous HTTP support via two classes. The @Suspended annotation, and AsyncResponse interface.

Injecting an AsynchronousResponse as a parameter to your jax-rs methods tells RESTEasy that the HTTP request/response should be detached from the currently executing thread and that the current thread should not try to automatically process the response.

The AsyncResponse is the callback object. The act of calling one of the resume() methods will cause a response to be sent back to the client and will also terminate the HTTP request. Here is an example of asynchronous processing:

import javax.ws.rs.Suspend;
import javax.ws.rs.core.AsynchronousResponse;

@Path("/")
public class SimpleResource
{

   @GET
   @Path("basic")
   @Produces("text/plain")
   public void getBasic(@Suspended final AsyncResponse response) throws Exception
   {
      Thread t = new Thread()
      {
         @Override
         public void run()
         {
            try
            {
               Response jaxrs = Response.ok("basic").type(MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN).build();
               response.resume(jaxrs);
            }
            catch (Exception e)
            {
               response.resume(e);
            }
         }
      };
      t.start();
   }
}
      

AsyncResponse also has other methods to cancel the execution. See javadoc for more details.

NOTE: The old RESTEasy proprietary API for async http has been deprecated and may be removed as soon as RESTEasy 3.1. In particular, the RESTEasy @Suspend annotation is replaced by javax.ws.rs.container.Suspended, and org.jboss.resteasy.spi.AsynchronousResponse is replaced by javax.ws.rs.container.AsyncResponse. Note that @Suspended does not have a value field, which represented a timeout limit. Instead, AsyncResponse.setTimeout() may be called.

It is possible to write filters that also turn the request asynchronous. Whether or not filters turned the request asynchronous before execution of your method makes absolutely no difference to your method: it does not need to be declared asynchronous in order to function as specified. Synchronous methods and asynchronous methods will work as specified by the spec.

Some backends support asynchronous IO operations (Servlet, Undertow, Vert.x, Quarkus, Netty), which are exposed using the AsyncOutputStream subtype of OutputStream. It includes async variants for writing and flushing the stream.

Some backends have what is called an "Event Loop Thread", which is a thread responsible for doing all IO operations. Those backends require the Event Loop Thread to never be blocked, because it does IO for every other thread. Those backends typically require JAX-RS endpoints to be invoked on worker threads, to make sure they never block the Event Loop Thread.

Sometimes, with Async programming, it is possible for asynchronous JAX-RS requests to be resumed from the Event Loop Thread. As a result, JAX-RS will attempt to serialise the response and send it to the client. But JAX-RS is written using "Blocking IO" mechanics, such as OutputStream (used by MessageBodyWriter and WriterInterceptor), which means that sending the response will block the current thread until the response is received. This would work on a worker thread, but if it happens on the Event Loop Thread it will block it and prevent it from sending the response, resulting in a deadlock.

As a result, we've decided to support and expose Async IO interfaces in the form of AsyncOutputStream, AsyncMessageBodyWriter and AsyncWriterInterceptor, to allow users to write Async IO applications in RESTEasy.

Most built-in MessageBodyWriter and WriterInterceptor support Async IO, with the notable exceptions of:

  • HtmlRenderableWriter, which is tied to servlet APIs

  • ReaderProvider

  • StreamingOutputProvider: use AsyncStreamingOutput instead

  • GZIPEncodingInterceptor

Async IO will be preferred if the following conditions are met:

  • The backend supports it

  • The writer supports it

  • All writer interceptors support it

If those conditions are not met, and you attempt to use Blocking IO on an Event Loop Thread (as determined by the backend), then an exception will be thrown.

The RESTEasy Asynchronous Job Service is an implementation of the Asynchronous Job pattern defined in O'Reilly's "Restful Web Services" book. The idea of it is to bring asynchronicity to a synchronous protocol.

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.

NOTE. A SecureRandom object is used to generate unique job ids. For security purposes, the SecureRandom is periodically reseeded. By default, it is reseeded after 100 uses. This value may be configured with the servlet init parameter "resteasy.secure.random.max.use".

Pluggable Asynchronous Injection, also referred to as Asynch Injection, is a feature that allows users to create custom injectable asynchronous types. For example it is now possible to declare an injector for Single<Foo> and inject it into an endpoint as a class variable or as a method parameter using @Context Foo. The response will be made asynchronous automatically and the resource method will only be invoked once the Single<Foo> object is resolved to Foo. Resolution is done in a non-blocking manner.

Note. Asynch injection is only attempted at points where asynchronous injection is permitted, such as on resource creation and resource method invocation. It is not enabled at points where the API does not allow for suspending the request, for example on ResourceContext.getResource(Foo.class).

With version 2.1, the JAX-RS specification (https://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=370) takes its first steps into the world of Reactive Programming. There are many discussions of reactive programming on the internet, and a general introduction is beyond the scope of this document, but there are a few things worth discussing. Some primary aspects of reactive programming are the following:

  • Reactive programming supports the declarative creation of rich computational structures. The representations of these structures can be passed around as first class objects such as method parameters and return values.
  • Reactive programming supports both synchronous and asynchronous computation, but it is particularly helpful in facilitating, at a relatively high level of expression, asynchronous computation. Conceptually, asynchronous computation in reactive program typically involves pushing data from one entity to another, rather than polling for data.

In java 1.8 and JAX-RS 2.1, the support for reactive programming is fairly limited. Java 1.8 introduces the interface java.util.concurrent.CompletionStage, and JAX-RS 2.1 mandates support for the javax.ws.rs.client.CompletionStageRxInvoker, which allows a client to obtain a response in the form of a CompletionStage.

One implementation of CompletionStage is the java.util.concurrent.CompleteableFuture. For example:

@Test
public void testCompletionStage() throws Exception {
   CompletionStage<String> stage = getCompletionStage();
   log.info("result: " + stage.toCompletableFuture().get());
}

private CompletionStage<String> getCompletionStage() {
   CompletableFuture<String> future = new CompletableFuture<String>();
   future.complete("foo");
   return future;
}

Here, a CompleteableFuture is created with the value "foo", and its value is extracted by the method CompletableFuture.get(). That's fine, but consider the altered version:

@Test
public void testCompletionStageAsync() throws Exception {
   log.info("start");
   CompletionStage<String> stage = getCompletionStageAsync();
   String result = stage.toCompletableFuture().get();
   log.info("do some work");
   log.info("result: " + result);
}

private CompletionStage<String> getCompletionStageAsync() {
   CompletableFuture<String> future = new CompletableFuture<String>();
   Executors.newCachedThreadPool().submit(() -> {sleep(2000); future.complete("foo");});
   return future;
}

private void sleep(long l) {
   try {
      Thread.sleep(l);
   } catch (InterruptedException e) {
      e.printStackTrace();
   }
}

with output something like:

3:10:51 PM INFO: start
3:10:53 PM INFO: do some work
3:10:53 PM INFO: result: foo

It also works, but it illustrates the fact that CompletableFuture.get() is a blocking call. The CompletionStage is constructed and returned immediately, but the value isn't returned for two seconds. A version that is more in the spirit of the reactive style is:

@Test
public void testCompletionStageAsyncAccept() throws Exception {
   log.info("start");
   CompletionStage<String> stage = getCompletionStageAsync();
   stage.thenAccept((String s) -> log.info("s: " + s));
   log.info("do some work");
   ...
}

In this case, the lambda (String s) -> log.info("s: " + s) is registered with the CompletionStage as a "subscriber", and, when the CompletionStage eventually has a value, that value is passed to the lambda. Note that the output is something like

3:23:05 INFO: start
3:23:05 INFO: do some work
3:23:07 INFO: s: foo

Executing CompletionStages asynchronously is so common that there are several supporting convenience methods. For example:

@Test
public void testCompletionStageSupplyAsync() throws Exception {
   CompletionStage<String> stage = getCompletionStageSupplyAsync();;
   stage.thenAccept((String s) -> log.info("s: " + s));
}

private CompletionStage<String> getCompletionStageSupplyAsync() {
   return CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(() -> "foo");
}

The static method ComputableFuture.supplyAsync() creates a ComputableFuture, the value of which is supplied asynchronously by the lambda () -> "foo", running, by default, in the default pool of java.util.concurrent.ForkJoinPool.

One final example illustrates a more complex computational structure:

@Test
public void testCompletionStageComplex() throws Exception {
   ExecutorService executor = Executors.newCachedThreadPool();
   CompletionStage<String> stage1 = getCompletionStageSupplyAsync1("foo", executor);
   CompletionStage<String> stage2 = getCompletionStageSupplyAsync1("bar", executor);
   CompletionStage<String> stage3 = stage1.thenCombineAsync(stage2, (String s, String t) -> s + t, executor);
   stage3.thenAccept((String s) -> log.info("s: " + s));
}

private CompletionStage<String> getCompletionStageSupplyAsync1(String s, ExecutorService executor) {
   return CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(() -> s, executor);
}

stage1 returns "foo", stage2 returns "bar", and stage3, which runs when both stage1 and stage2 have completed, returns the concatenation of "foo" and "bar". Note that, in this example, an explict ExecutorService is provided for asynchronous processing.

On the client side, the JAX-RS 2.1 specification mandates an implementation of the interface javax.ws.rs.client.CompletionStageRxInvoker:

public interface CompletionStageRxInvoker extends RxInvoker<CompletionStage> {

    @Override
    public CompletionStage<Response> get();

    @Override
    public <T> CompletionStage<T> get(Class<T> responseType);

    @Override
    public <T> CompletionStage<T> get(GenericType<T> responseType);
    ...

That is, there are invocation methods for the standard HTTP verbs, just as in the standard javax.ws.rs.client.SyncInvoker. A CompletionStageRxInvoker is obtained by calling rx() on a javax.ws.rs.client.Invocation.Builder, which extends SyncInvoker. For example,

Invocation.Builder builder = client.target(generateURL("/get/string")).request();
CompletionStageRxInvoker invoker = builder.rx(CompletionStageRxInvoker.class);
CompletionStage<Response> stage = invoker.get();
Response response = stage.toCompletableFuture().get();
log.info("result: " + response.readEntity(String.class));

or

CompletionStageRxInvoker invoker = client.target(generateURL("/get/string")).request().rx(CompletionStageRxInvoker.class);
CompletionStage<String> stage = invoker.get(String.class);
String s = stage.toCompletableFuture().get();
log.info("result: " + s);

On the server side, the JAX-RS 2.1 specification requires support for resource methods with return type CompletionStage<T>. For example,

@GET
@Path("get/async")
public CompletionStage<String> longRunningOpAsync() {
   CompletableFuture<String> cs = new CompletableFuture<>();
   executor.submit(
      new Runnable() {
         public void run() {
            executeLongRunningOp();
            cs.complete("Hello async world!");
         }
      });
   return cs;
}

The way to think about longRunningOpAsync() is that it is asynchronously creating and returning a String. After cs.complete() is called, the server will return the String "Hello async world!" to the client.

An important thing to understand is that the decision to produce a result asynchronously on the server and the decision to retrieve the result asynchronously on the client are independent. Suppose that there is also a resource method

@GET
@Path("get/sync")
public String longRunningOpSync() {
   return "Hello async world!";
}

Then all three of the following invocations are valid:

public void testGetStringAsyncAsync() throws Exception {
   CompletionStageRxInvoker invoker = client.target(generateURL("/get/async")).request().rx();
   CompletionStage<String> stage = invoker.get(String.class);
   log.info("s: " + stage.toCompletableFuture().get());
}
public void testGetStringSyncAsync() throws Exception {
   Builder request = client.target(generateURL("/get/async")).request();
   String s = request.get(String.class);
   log.info("s: " + s);
}

and

public void testGetStringAsyncSync() throws Exception {
   CompletionStageRxInvoker invoker = client.target(generateURL("/get/sync")).request().rx();
   CompletionStage<String> stage = invoker.get(String.class);
   log.info("s: " + stage.toCompletableFuture().get());
}

Note

Since running code asynchronously is so common in this context, it is worth pointing out that objects obtained by way of the annotation @Context or by way of calling ResteasyContext.getContextData() are sensitive to the executing thread. For example, given resource method

@GET
@Path("test")
@Produces("text/plain")
public CompletionStage<String> text(@Context HttpRequest request) {
   System.out.println("request (inline): " + request);
   System.out.println("application (inline): " + ResteasyContext.getContextData(Application.class));
   CompletableFuture<String> cs = new CompletableFuture<>();
   ExecutorService executor = Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor();
   executor.submit(
         new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
               try {
                  System.out.println("request (async): " + request); 
                  System.out.println("application (async): " + ResteasyContext.getContextData(Application.class));
                  cs.complete("hello");
               } catch (Exception e) {
                  e.printStackTrace();
               }
            }
         });
   return cs;
}

the output will look something like

application (inline): org.jboss.resteasy.experiment.Test1798CompletionStage$TestApp@23c57474
request (inline): org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.Servlet3AsyncHttpRequest@2ce23138
application (async): null
org.jboss.resteasy.spi.LoggableFailure: RESTEASY003880: Unable to find contextual data of type: org.jboss.resteasy.spi.HttpRequest

The point is that it is the developer's responsibility to extract information from these context objects in advance. For example:

@GET
@Path("test")
@Produces("text/plain")
public CompletionStage<String> text(@Context HttpRequest req) {
   System.out.println("request (inline): " + request);
   System.out.println("application (inline): " + ResteasyContext.getContextData(Application.class));
   CompletableFuture<String> cs = new CompletableFuture<>();
   ExecutorService executor = Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor();
   final String httpMethodFinal = request.getHttpMethod();
   final Map<String, Object> mapFinal = ResteasyContext.getContextData(Application.class).getProperties();
   executor.submit(
         new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
               System.out.println("httpMethod (async): " + httpMethodFinal); 
               System.out.println("map (async): " + mapFinal); 
               cs.complete("hello");
            }
         });
   return cs;
}

Alternatively, you can use RESTEasy's support of MicroProfile Context Propagation by using ThreadContext.contextualRunnable around your Runnable, which will take care of capturing and restoring all registered contexts (you will need to import the resteasy-context-propagation module):

@GET
@Path("test")
@Produces("text/plain")
public CompletionStage<String> text(@Context HttpRequest req) {
   System.out.println("request (inline): " + request);
   System.out.println("application (inline): " + ResteasyContext.getContextData(Application.class));
   CompletableFuture<String> cs = new CompletableFuture<>();
   ThreadContext threadContext = ThreadContext.builder()
                                                   .propagated(ThreadContext.ALL_REMAINING)
                                                   .unchanged()
                                                   .cleared()
                                                   .build();
   ExecutorService executor = Executors.newSingleThreadExecutor();
   executor.submit(
         threadContext.contextualRunnable(new Runnable() {
            public void run() {
               try {
                  System.out.println("request (async): " + request); 
                  System.out.println("application (async): " + ResteasyContext.getContextData(Application.class));
                  cs.complete("hello");
               } catch (Exception e) {
                  e.printStackTrace();
               }
            }
         }));
   return cs;
}

The picture becomes more complex and interesting when sequences are added. A CompletionStage holds no more than one potential value, but other reactive objects can hold multiple, even unlimited, values. Currently, most Java implementations of reactive programming are based on the project Reactive Streams (http://www.reactive-streams.org/), which defines a set of four interfaces and a specification, in the form of a set of rules, describing how they interact:

public interface Publisher<T> {
    public void subscribe(Subscriber<? super T> s);
}

public interface Subscriber<T> {
    public void onSubscribe(Subscription s);
    public void onNext(T t);
    public void onError(Throwable t);
    public void onComplete();
}

public interface Subscription {
    public void request(long n);
    public void cancel();
}

public interface Processor<T, R> extends Subscriber<T>, Publisher<R> {
}

A Producer pushes objects to a Subscriber, a Subscription mediates the relationship between the two, and a Processor which is derived from both, helps to construct pipelines through which objects pass.

One important aspect of the specification is flow control, the ability of a Suscriber to control the load it receives from a Producer by calling Suscription.request(). The general term in this context for flow control is backpressure.

There are a number of implementations of Reactive Streams, including

RESTEasy currently supports RxJava (deprecated) and RxJava2.

JAX-RS 2.1 doesn't require support for any Reactive Streams implementations, but it does allow for extensibility to support various reactive libraries. RESTEasy's optional module resteasy-rxjava2 adds support for RxJava 2.

More in details, resteasy-rxjava2 contributes support for reactive types io.reactivex.Single, io.reactivex.Flowable, and io.reactivex.Observable. Of these, Single is similar to CompletionStage in that it holds at most one potential value. Flowable implements io.reactivex.Publisher, and Observable is very similar to Flowable except that it doesn't support backpressure. So, if you import resteasy-rxjava2, you can just start returning these reactive types from your resource methods on the server side and receiving them on the client side.

Note

When you use RESTEasy's modules for RxJava, the reactive contexts are automatically propagated to all supported RxJava types, which means you don't need to worry about @Context injection not working within RxJava lambdas, contrary to CompletionStage (as previously noted).

Given the class Thing, which can be represented in JSON:

public class Thing {

   private String name;

   public Thing() {
   }

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

the method postThingList() in the following is a valid resource method:

...
@POST
@Path("post/thing/list")
@Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
@Stream
public Flowable<List<Thing>> postThingList(String s) {
   return buildFlowableThingList(s, 2, 3);
}

static Flowable<List<Thing>> buildFlowableThingList(String s, int listSize, int elementSize) {
   return Flowable.create(
      new FlowableOnSubscribe<List<Thing>>() {

         @Override
         public void subscribe(FlowableEmitter<List<Thing>> emitter) throws Exception {
            for (int i = 0; i < listSize; i++) {
               List<Thing> list = new ArrayList<Thing>();
               for (int j = 0; j < elementSize; j++) {
                  list.add(new Thing(s));
               }
               emitter.onNext(list);
            }
            emitter.onComplete();
         }
      },
      BackpressureStrategy.BUFFER);
}

The somewhat imposing method buildFlowableThingList() probably deserves some explanation. First,

Flowable<List<Thing>> Flowable.create(FlowableOnSubscribe<List<Thing>> source, BackpressureStrategy mode);

creates a Flowable<List<Thing>> by describing what should happen when the Flowable<List<Thing>> is subscribed to. FlowableEmitter<List<Thing>> extends io.reactivex.Emitter<List<Thing>>:

/**
 * Base interface for emitting signals in a push-fashion in various generator-like source
 * operators (create, generate).
 *
 * @param <T> the value type emitted
 */
public interface Emitter<T> {

    /**
     * Signal a normal value.
     * @param value the value to signal, not null
     */
    void onNext(@NonNull T value);

    /**
     * Signal a Throwable exception.
     * @param error the Throwable to signal, not null
     */
    void onError(@NonNull Throwable error);

    /**
     * Signal a completion.
     */
    void onComplete();
}

and FlowableOnSubscribe uses a FlowableEmitter to send out values from the Flowable<List<Thing>>:

/**
 * A functional interface that has a {@code subscribe()} method that receives
 * an instance of a {@link FlowableEmitter} instance that allows pushing
 * events in a backpressure-safe and cancellation-safe manner.
 *
 * @param <T> the value type pushed
 */
public interface FlowableOnSubscribe<T> {

    /**
     * Called for each Subscriber that subscribes.
     * @param e the safe emitter instance, never null
     * @throws Exception on error
     */
    void subscribe(@NonNull FlowableEmitter<T> e) throws Exception;
}

So, what will happen when a subscription to the Flowable<List<Thing>> is created is, the FlowableEmitter.onNext() will be called, once for each <List<Thing>> created, followed by a call to FlowableEmitter.onComplete() to indicate that the sequence has ended. Under the covers, RESTEasy subscribes to the Flowable<List<Thing>> and handles each element passed in by way of onNext().

On the client side, JAX-RS 2.1 supports extensions for reactive classes by adding the method

/**
 * Access a reactive invoker based on a {@link RxInvoker} subclass provider. Note
 * that corresponding {@link RxInvokerProvider} must be registered in the client runtime.
 * 
 * This method is an extension point for JAX-RS implementations to support other types
 * representing asynchronous computations.
 *
 * @param clazz {@link RxInvoker} subclass.
 * @return reactive invoker instance.
 * @throws IllegalStateException when provider for given class is not registered.
 * @see javax.ws.rs.client.Client#register(Class)
 * @since 2.1
 */
public <T extends RxInvoker> T rx(Class<T> clazz);

to interface javax.ws.rs.client.Invocation.Builder. Resteasy module resteasy-rxjava2 adds support for classes:

  1. org.jboss.resteasy.rxjava2.SingleRxInvoker,
  2. org.jboss.resteasy.rxjava2.FlowableRxInvoker
  3. org.jbosss.resteasy.rxjava2.ObservableRxInvoker

which allow accessing Singles, Observables, and Flowables on the client side.

For example, given the resource method postThingList() above, a Flowable<List<Thing>> can be retrieved from the server by calling

@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
@Test
public void testPostThingList() throws Exception {
   CountDownLatch latch = new CountdownLatch(1);
   FlowableRxInvoker invoker = client.target(generateURL("/post/thing/list")).request().rx(FlowableRxInvoker.class);
   Flowable<List<Thing>> flowable = (Flowable<List<Thing>>) invoker.post(Entity.entity("a", MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN_TYPE), new GenericType<List<Thing>>() {});
   flowable.subscribe(
         (List<?> l) -> thingListList.add(l),
         (Throwable t) -> latch.countDown(),
         () -> latch.countDown());
   latch.await();
   Assert.assertEquals(aThingListList, thingListList);
}

where aThingListList is

[[Thing[a], Thing[a], Thing[a]], [Thing[a], Thing[a], Thing[a]]]

Note the call to Flowable.suscribe(). On the server side, RESTEasy subscribes to a returning Flowable in order to receive its elements and send them over the wire. On the client side, the user subscribes to the Flowable in order to receive its elements and do whatever it wants to with them. In this case, three lambdas determine what should happen 1) for each element, 2) if a Throwable is thrown, and 3) when the Flowable is done passing elements.

Neither Reactive Streams nor JAX-RS have anything to say about representing reactive types on the network. RESTEasy offers a number of representations, each suitable for different circumstances. The wire protocol is determined by 1) the presence or absence of the @Stream annotation on the resource method, and 2) the value of the value field in the @Stream annotation:

@Target({ElementType.TYPE, ElementType.METHOD})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface Stream
{
   public enum MODE {RAW, GENERAL};
   public String INCLUDE_STREAMING_PARAMETER = "streaming";
   public MODE value() default MODE.GENERAL;
   public boolean includeStreaming() default false;
}

Note that MODE.GENERAL is the default value, so @Stream is equivalent to @Stream(Stream.MODE.GENERAL).

No @Stream annotation on the resource method
Resteasy will collect every value until the stream is complete, then wrap them into a java.util.List entity and send to the client.
@Stream(Stream.MODE.GENERAL)
This case uses a variant of the SSE format, modified to eliminate some restrictions inherent in SSE. (See the specification at https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/server-sent-events.html for details.) In particular, 1) SSE events are meant to hold text data, represented in character set UTF-8. In the general streaming mode, certain delimiting characters in the data ('\r', '\n', and '\') are escaped so that arbitrary binary data can be transmitted. Also, 2) the SSE specification requires the client to reconnect if it gets disconnected. If the stream is finite, reconnecting will induce a repeat of the stream, so SSE is really meant for unlimited streams. In general streaming mode, the client will close, rather than automatically reconnect, at the end of the stream. It follows that this mode is suitable for finite streams.

Note. The Content-Type header in general streaming mode is set to

          applicaton/x-stream-general;"element-type=<element-type>"
                

where <element-type> is the media type of the data elements in the stream. The element media type is derived from the @Produces annotation. For example,

      @GET
      @Path("flowable/thing")
      @Stream
      @Produces("application/json")
      public Flowable<Thing> getFlowable() { ... }
                

induces the media type

          application/x-stream-general;"element-type=application/json"
                

which describes a stream of JSON elements.

@Stream(Stream.MODE.RAW)
In this case each value is written directly to the wire, without any formatting, as it becomes available. This is most useful for values that can be cut in pieces, such as strings, bytes, buffers, etc., and then re-concatenated on the client side. Note that without delimiters as in general mode, it isn't possible to reconstruct something like List<List<String>>.

Note. The Content-Type header in raw streaming mode is derived from the @Produces annotation. The @Stream annotation offers the possibility of an optional MediaType parameter called "streaming". The point is to be able to suggest that the stream of data emanating from the server is unbounded, i.e., that the client shouldn't try to read it all as a single byte array, for example. The parameter is set by explicitly setting the @Stream parameter includeStreaming() to true. For example,

   @GET
   @Path("byte/default")
   @Produces("application/octet-stream;x=y")
   @Stream(Stream.MODE.RAW)
   public Flowable<Byte> aByteDefault() {
      return Flowable.fromArray((byte) 0, (byte) 1, (byte) 2);
   }

induces the MediaType "application/octet-stream;x=y", and

   @GET
   @Path("byte/true")
   @Produces("application/octet-stream;x=y")
   @Stream(value=Stream.MODE.RAW, includeStreaming=true)
   public Flowable<Byte> aByteTrue() {
      return Flowable.fromArray((byte) 0, (byte) 1, (byte) 2);
   }

induces the MediaType "application/octet-stream;x=y;streaming=true".

Note that browsers such as Firefox and Chrome seem to be comfortable with reading unlimited streams without any additional hints.

Example 1.

@POST
@Path("post/thing/list")
@Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
@Stream(Stream.MODE.GENERAL)
public Flowable<List<Thing>> postThingList(String s) {
   return buildFlowableThingList(s, 2, 3);
}
...
@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
@Test
public void testPostThingList() throws Exception {
   CountDownLatch latch = new CountdownLatch(1);
   FlowableRxInvoker invoker = client.target(generateURL("/post/thing/list")).request().rx(FlowableRxInvoker.class);
   Flowable<List<Thing>> flowable = (Flowable<List<Thing>>) invoker.post(Entity.entity("a", MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN_TYPE), new GenericType<List<Thing>>() {});
   flowable.subscribe(
         (List<?> l) -> thingListList.add(l),
         (Throwable t) -> latch.countDown(),
         () -> latch.countDown());
   latch.await();
   Assert.assertEquals(aThingListList, thingListList);
}

This is the example given previously, except that the mode in the @Stream annotation (which defaults to MODE.GENERAL) is given explicitly. In this scenario, the Flowable emits <List<Thing>> elements on the server, they are transmitted over the wire as SSE events:

data: [{"name":"a"},{"name":"a"},{"name":"a"}]
data: [{"name":"a"},{"name":"a"},{"name":"a"}]

and the FlowableRxInvoker reconstitutes a Flowable on the client side.

Example 2.

@POST
@Path("post/thing/list")
@Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
public Flowable<List<Thing>> postThingList(String s) {
   return buildFlowableThingList(s, 2, 3);
}
...
@Test
public void testPostThingList() throws Exception {
   Builder request = client.target(generateURL("/post/thing/list")).request();
   List<List<Thing>> list = request.post(Entity.entity("a", MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN_TYPE), new GenericType<List<List<Thing>>>() {});
   Assert.assertEquals(aThingListList, list);
}  

In this scenario, in which the resource method has no @Stream annotation, the Flowable emits stream elements which are accumulated by the server until the Flowable is done, at which point the entire JSON list is transmitted over the wire:

[[{"name":"a"},{"name":"a"},{"name":"a"}],[{"name":"a"},{"name":"a"},{"name":"a"}]]

and the list is reconstituted on the client side by an ordinary invoker.

Example 3.

@GET
@Path("get/bytes")
@Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_OCTET_STREAM)
@Stream(Stream.MODE.RAW)
public Flowable<byte[]> getBytes() {
   return Flowable.create(
      new FlowableOnSubscribe<byte[]>() {

         @Override
         public void subscribe(FlowableEmitter<byte[]> emitter) throws Exception {
            for (int i = 0; i < 3; i++) {
               byte[] b = new byte[10];
               for (int j = 0; j < 10; j++) {
                  b[j] = (byte) (i + j);
               }
               emitter.onNext(b);
            }
            emitter.onComplete();
         }
      },
      BackpressureStrategy.BUFFER);
}
...
@Test
public void testGetBytes() throws Exception {
   Builder request = client.target(generateURL("/get/bytes")).request();
   InputStream is = request.get(InputStream.class);
   int n = is.read();
   while (n > -1) {
      System.out.print(n);
      n = is.read();
   }
}

Here, the byte arrays are written to the network as they are created by the Flowable. On the network, they are concatenated, so the client sees one stream of bytes.

Since general streaming mode and SSE share minor variants of the same wire protocol, they are, modulo the SSE restriction to character data, interchangeable. That is, an SSE client can connect to a resource method that returns a Flowable or an Observable, and a FlowableRxInvoker, for example, can connect to an SSE resource method.

Note. SSE requires a @Produces("text/event-stream") annotation, so, unlike the cases of raw and general streaming, the element media type cannot be derived from the @Produces annotation. To solve this problem, Resteasy introduces the

@Target({ElementType.TYPE, ElementType.METHOD})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
public @interface SseElementType
{
   public String value();
}

annotation, from which the element media type is derived.

Example 1.

@GET
@Path("eventStream/thing")
@Produces("text/event-stream")
@SseElementType("application/json")
public void eventStreamThing(@Context SseEventSink eventSink, @Context Sse sse) {
   new ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor(5).execute(() -> {
      try (SseEventSink sink = eventSink) {
         OutboundSseEvent.Builder  builder = sse.newEventBuilder();
         eventSink.send(builder.data(new Thing("e1")).build());
         eventSink.send(builder.data(new Thing("e2")).build());
         eventSink.send(builder.data(new Thing("e3")).build());
      }
   });
}
...
@SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
@Test
public void testFlowableToSse() throws Exception {
   CountDownLatch latch = new CountDownLatch(1);
   final AtomicInteger errors = new AtomicInteger(0);
   FlowableRxInvoker invoker = client.target(generateURL("/eventStream/thing")).request().rx(FlowableRxInvoker.class);
   Flowable<Thing> flowable = (Flowable<Thing>) invoker.get(Thing.class);
   flowable.subscribe(
      (Thing t) -> thingList.add(t),
      (Throwable t) -> errors.incrementAndGet(),
      () -> latch.countDown());
   boolean waitResult = latch.await(30, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
   Assert.assertTrue("Waiting for event to be delivered has timed out.", waitResult);
   Assert.assertEquals(0, errors.get());
   Assert.assertEquals(eThingList, thingList);
}  

Here, a FlowableRxInvoker is connecting to an SSE resource method. On the network, the data looks like

data: {"name":"e1"}
data: {"name":"e2"}
data: {"name":"e3"}

Note that the character data is suitable for an SSE resource method.

Also, note that the eventStreamThing() method in this example induces the media type

    text/event-stream;element-type="application/json"

Example 2.

@GET
@Path("flowable/thing")
@Produces("text/event-stream")
@SseElementType("application/json")
public Flowable<Thing> flowableSSE() {
   return Flowable.create(
      new FlowableOnSubscribe<Thing>() {

         @Override
         public void subscribe(FlowableEmitter<Thing> emitter) throws Exception {
            emitter.onNext(new Thing("e1"));
            emitter.onNext(new Thing("e2"));
            emitter.onNext(new Thing("e3"));
            emitter.onComplete();
         }
      },
      BackpressureStrategy.BUFFER);
}
...
@Test
public void testSseToFlowable() throws Exception {
   final CountDownLatch latch = new CountDownLatch(3);
   final AtomicInteger errors = new AtomicInteger(0);
   WebTarget target = client.target(generateURL("/flowable/thing"));
   SseEventSource msgEventSource = SseEventSource.target(target).build();
   try (SseEventSource eventSource = msgEventSource)
   {
      eventSource.register(
         event -> {thingList.add(event.readData(Thing.class, MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_TYPE)); latch.countDown();},
         ex -> errors.incrementAndGet());
      eventSource.open();

      boolean waitResult = latch.await(30, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
      Assert.assertTrue("Waiting for event to be delivered has timed out.", waitResult);
      Assert.assertEquals(0, errors.get());
      Assert.assertEquals(eThingList, thingList);
   }
}

Here, an SSE client is connecting to a resource method that returns a Flowable. Again, the server is sending character data, which is suitable for the SSE client, and the data looks the same on the network.

Proxies, discussed in RESTEasy Proxy Framework, are a RESTEasy extension that supports a natural programming style in which generic JAX-RS invoker calls are replaced by application specific interface calls. The proxy framework is extended to include both CompletionStage and the RxJava2 types Single, Observable, and Flowable.

Example 1.

@Path("")
public interface RxCompletionStageResource {

   @GET
   @Path("get/string")
   @Produces(MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN)
   public CompletionStage<String> getString();
}

@Path("")
public class RxCompletionStageResourceImpl {

   @GET
   @Path("get/string")
   @Produces(MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN)
   public CompletionStage<String> getString() { .... }
}

public class RxCompletionStageProxyTest {

   private static ResteasyClient client;
   private static RxCompletionStageResource proxy;
   
   static {
      client = (ResteasyClient)ClientBuilder.newClient();
      proxy = client.target(generateURL("/")).proxy(RxCompletionStageResource.class);
   }
   
   @Test
   public void testGet() throws Exception {
      CompletionStage<String> completionStage = proxy.getString();
      Assert.assertEquals("x", completionStage.toCompletableFuture().get());
   }
}

Example 2.

public interface Rx2FlowableResource {

   @GET
   @Path("get/string")
   @Produces(MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN)
   @Stream
   public Flowable<String> getFlowable();
}

@Path("")
public class Rx2FlowableResourceImpl {

   @GET
   @Path("get/string")
   @Produces(MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN)
   @Stream
   public Flowable<String> getFlowable() { ... }
}

public class Rx2FlowableProxyTest {

   private static ResteasyClient client;
   private static Rx2FlowableResource proxy;
   
   static {
      client = (ResteasyClient)ClientBuilder.newClient();
      proxy = client.target(generateURL("/")).proxy(Rx2FlowableResource.class);
   }
   
   @Test
   public void testGet() throws Exception {
      Flowable<String> flowable = proxy.getFlowable();
      flowable.subscribe(
         (String o) -> stringList.add(o),
         (Throwable t) -> errors.incrementAndGet(),
         () -> latch.countDown());
      boolean waitResult = latch.await(30, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
      Assert.assertTrue("Waiting for event to be delivered has timed out.", waitResult);
      Assert.assertEquals(0, errors.get());
      Assert.assertEquals(xStringList, stringList);
   }
}

RESTEasy implements a framework that supports extensions for additional reactive classes. To understand the framework, it is necessary to understand the existing support for CompletionStage and other reactive classes.

Server side. When a resource method returns a CompletionStage, RESTEasy subscribes to it using the class org.jboss.resteasy.core.AsyncResponseConsumer.CompletionStageResponseConsumer. When the CompletionStage completes, it calls CompletionStageResponseConsumer.accept(), which sends the result back to the client.

Support for CompletionStage is built in to RESTEasy, but it's not hard to extend that support to a class like Single by providing a mechanism for transforming a Single into a CompletionStage. In module resteasy-rxjava2, that mechanism is supplied by org.jboss.resteasy.rxjava2.SingleProvider, which implements interface org.jboss.resteasy.spi.AsyncResponseProvider<Single<?>>:

public interface AsyncResponseProvider<T> {
   public CompletionStage toCompletionStage(T asyncResponse);
}

Given SingleProvider, RESTEasy can take a Single, transform it into a CompletionStage, and then use CompletionStageResponseConsumer to handle the eventual value of the Single.

Similarly, when a resource method returns a streaming reactive class like Flowable, RESTEasy subscribes to it, receives a stream of data elements, and sends them to the client. AsyncResponseConsumer has several supporting classes, each of which implements a different mode of streaming. For example, AsyncResponseConsumer.AsyncGeneralStreamingSseResponseConsumer handles general streaming and SSE streaming. Subscribing is done by calling org.reactivestreams.Publisher.subscribe(), so a mechanism is needed for turning, say, a Flowable into a Publisher. That is, an implementation of org.jboss.resteasy.spi.AsyncStreamProvider<Flowable> is called for, where AsyncStreamProvider is defined:

public interface AsyncStreamProvider<T> {
   public Publisher toAsyncStream(T asyncResponse);
}

In module resteasy-rxjava2, org.jboss.resteasy.FlowableProvider provides that mechanism for Flowable. [Actually, that's not too hard since, in rxjava2, a Flowable is a Provider.]

So, on the server side, adding support for other reactive types can be done by declaring a @Provider for the interface AsyncStreamProvider (for streams) or AsyncResponseProvider (for single values), which both have a single method to convert the new reactive type into (respectively) a Publisher (for streams) or a CompletionStage (for single values).

Client side. The JAX-RS specification version 2.1 imposes two requirements for support of reactive classes on the client side:

  1. support for CompletionStage in the form of an implementation of the interface javax.ws.rs.client.CompletionStageRxInvoker, and
  2. extensibility in the form of support for registering providers that implement
    public interface RxInvokerProvider<T extends RxInvoker> {
        public boolean isProviderFor(Class<T> clazz);
        public T getRxInvoker(SyncInvoker syncInvoker, ExecutorService executorService);
    }
    
    Once an RxInvokerProvider is registered, an RxInvoker can be requested by calling the javax.ws.rs.client.Invocation.Builder method
    public <T extends RxInvoker> T rx(Class<T> clazz);
    
    That RxInvoker can then be used for making an invocation that returns the appropriate reactive class. For example,
    FlowableRxInvoker invoker = client.target(generateURL("/get/string")).request().rx(FlowableRxInvoker.class);
    Flowable<String> flowable = (Flowable<String>) invoker.get();
    

RESTEasy provides partial support for implementing RxInvokers. For example, SingleProvider, mentioned above, also implements org.jboss.resteasy.spi.AsyncClientResponseProvider<Single<?>>, where AsyncClientResponseProvider is defined

public interface AsyncClientResponseProvider<T> {
   public T fromCompletionStage(CompletionStage<?> completionStage);
}

SingleProvider's ability to turn a CompletionStage into a Single is used in the implementation of org.jboss.resteasy.rxjava2.SingleRxInvokerImpl.

The same concept might be useful in implementing other RxInvokers. Note, though, that ObservableRxInvokerImpl and FlowableRxInvokerImpl in module resteasy-rxjava2 are each derived directly from the SSE implementation.

RESTEasy has a few different plugins for different embedabble HTTP and/or Servlet containers if use RESTEasy in a test environment, or within an environment where you do not want a Servlet engine dependency.

Undertow is a new Servlet Container that is used by WildFly (JBoss Community Server). You can embed Undertow as you wish. Here's a a test that shows it in action.

import io.undertow.servlet.api.DeploymentInfo;
import org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.undertow.UndertowJaxrsServer;
import org.jboss.resteasy.test.TestPortProvider;
import org.junit.AfterClass;
import org.junit.Assert;
import org.junit.BeforeClass;
import org.junit.Test;

import javax.ws.rs.ApplicationPath;
import javax.ws.rs.GET;
import javax.ws.rs.Path;
import javax.ws.rs.Produces;
import javax.ws.rs.client.Client;
import javax.ws.rs.client.ClientBuilder;
import javax.ws.rs.core.Application;
import java.util.HashSet;
import java.util.Set;

/**
 * @author <a href="mailto:bill@burkecentral.com">Bill Burke</a>
 * @version $Revision: 1 $
 */
public class UndertowTest
{
   private static UndertowJaxrsServer server;

   @Path("/test")
   public static class Resource
   {
      @GET
      @Produces("text/plain")
      public String get()
      {
         return "hello world";
      }
   }

   @ApplicationPath("/base")
   public static class MyApp extends Application
   {
      @Override
      public Set<Class<?>> getClasses()
      {
         HashSet<Class<?>> classes = new HashSet<Class<?>>();
         classes.add(Resource.class);
         return classes;
      }
   }

   @BeforeClass
   public static void init() throws Exception
   {
      server = new UndertowJaxrsServer().start();
   }

   @AfterClass
   public static void stop() throws Exception
   {
      server.stop();
   }

   @Test
   public void testApplicationPath() throws Exception
   {
      server.deployOldStyle(MyApp.class);
      Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
      String val = client.target(TestPortProvider.generateURL("/base/test"))
                         .request().get(String.class);
      Assert.assertEquals("hello world", val);
      client.close();
   }

   @Test
   public void testApplicationContext() throws Exception
   {
      server.deployOldStyle(MyApp.class, "/root");
      Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
      String val = client.target(TestPortProvider.generateURL("/root/test"))
                         .request().get(String.class);
      Assert.assertEquals("hello world", val);
      client.close();
   }

   @Test
   public void testDeploymentInfo() throws Exception
   {
      DeploymentInfo di = server.undertowDeployment(MyApp.class);
      di.setContextPath("/di");
      di.setDeploymentName("DI");
      server.deploy(di);
      Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
      String val = client.target(TestPortProvider.generateURL("/di/base/test"))
                         .request().get(String.class);
      Assert.assertEquals("hello world", val);
      client.close();
   }
}

RESTEasy has integration with the popular Vert.x project as well..

 
   public static void start(VertxResteasyDeployment deployment) throws Exception
   {
      VertxJaxrsServer server = new VertxJaxrsServer();
      server.setDeployment(deployment);
      server.setPort(TestPortProvider.getPort());
      server.setRootResourcePath("");
      server.setSecurityDomain(null);
      server.start();
   }
    

Maven project you must include is:

 
  <dependency>
      <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
      <artifactId>resteasy-vertx</artifactId>
      <version>4.5.2.Final</version>
  </dependency>
    

The server will bootstrap its own Vert.x instance and Http server.

When a resource is called, it is done with the Vert.x Event Loop thread, keep in mind to not block this thread and respect the Vert.x programming model, see the related Vert.x manual page.

Vert.x extends the RESTEasy registry to provide a new binding scope that creates resources per Event Loop:

 
  VertxResteasyDeployment deployment = new VertxResteasyDeployment();
  // Create an instance of resource per Event Loop
  deployment.getRegistry().addPerInstanceResource(Resource.class);
    

The per instance binding scope caches the same resource instance for each event loop providing the same concurrency model than a verticle deployed multiple times.

Vert.x can also embed a RESTEasy deployment, making easy to use Jax-RS annotated controller in Vert.x applications:

 
  Vertx vertx = Vertx.vertx();
  HttpServer server = vertx.createHttpServer();

  // Set an handler calling Resteasy
  server.requestHandler(new VertxRequestHandler(vertx, deployment));

  // Start the server
  server.listen(8080, "localhost");
    

Vert.x objects can be injected in annotated resources:

 
  @GET
  @Path("/somepath")
  @Produces("text/plain")
  public String context(
      @Context io.vertx.core.Context context,
      @Context io.vertx.core.Vertx vertx,
      @Context io.vertx.core.http.HttpServerRequest req,
      @Context io.vertx.core.http.HttpServerResponse resp) {
    return "the-response";
  }
    

Although RESTEasy has an Embeddable Container, you may not be comfortable with the idea of starting and stopping a web server within unit tests (in reality, the embedded container starts in milli seconds), or you might not like the idea of using Apache HTTP Client or java.net.URL to test your code. RESTEasy provides a mock framework so that you can invoke on your resource directly.

import org.jboss.resteasy.mock.*;
...

      Dispatcher dispatcher = MockDispatcherFactory.createDispatcher();

      POJOResourceFactory noDefaults = new POJOResourceFactory(LocatingResource.class);
      dispatcher.getRegistry().addResourceFactory(noDefaults);

      {
         MockHttpRequest request = MockHttpRequest.get("/locating/basic");
         MockHttpResponse response = new MockHttpResponse();

         dispatcher.invoke(request, response);


         Assert.assertEquals(HttpServletResponse.SC_OK, response.getStatus());
         Assert.assertEquals("basic", response.getContentAsString());
      }

See the RESTEasy Javadoc for all the ease-of-use methods associated with MockHttpRequest, and MockHttpResponse.

Because RESTEasy is deployed as a servlet, you must use standard web.xml constraints to enable authentication and authorization.

Unfortunately, web.xml constraints do not mesh very well with JAX-RS in some situations. The problem is that web.xml URL pattern matching is very very limited. URL patterns in web.xml only support simple wildcards, so JAX-RS resources like:

/{pathparam1}/foo/bar/{pathparam2} 

Cannot be mapped as a web.xml URL pattern like:

/*/foo/bar/*

To get around this problem you will need to use the security annotations defined below on your JAX-RS methods. You will still need to set up some general security constraint elements in web.xml to turn on authentication.

RESTEasy JAX-RS supports the @RolesAllowed, @PermitAll and @DenyAll annotations on JAX-RS methods. By default though, RESTEasy does not recognize these annotations. You have to configure RESTEasy to turn on role-based security by setting the appropriate parameter. NOTE!!! Do not turn on this switch if you are using EJBs. The EJB container will provide this functionality instead of RESTEasy. To configure this switch as a context-param, do this:


<web-app>
...
   <context-param>
      <param-name>resteasy.role.based.security</param-name>
      <param-value>true</param-value>
   </context-param>
</web-app>

See Section 3.4, “Configuration” for more information about application configuration.

There is a bit of quirkiness with this approach. You will have to declare all roles used within the RESTEasy JAX-RS war file that you are using in your JAX-RS classes and set up a security constraint that permits all of these roles access to every URL handled by the JAX-RS runtime. You'll just have to trust that RESTEasy JAX-RS authorizes properly.

How does RESTEasy do authorization? Well, its really simple. It just sees if a method is annotated with @RolesAllowed and then just does HttpServletRequest.isUserInRole. If one of the @RolesAllowed passes, then allow the request, otherwise, a response is sent back with a 401 (Unauthorized) response code.

So, here's an example of a modified RESTEasy WAR file. You'll notice that every role declared is allowed access to every URL controlled by the RESTEasy servlet.


<web-app>

   <context-param>
      <param-name>resteasy.role.based.security</param-name>
      <param-value>true</param-value>
   </context-param>

   <security-constraint>
      <web-resource-collection>
         <web-resource-name>Resteasy</web-resource-name>
         <url-pattern>/security</url-pattern>
      </web-resource-collection>
       <auth-constraint>
         <role-name>admin</role-name>
         <role-name>user</role-name>
      </auth-constraint>
  </security-constraint>

   <login-config>
      <auth-method>BASIC</auth-method>
      <realm-name>Test</realm-name>
   </login-config>

   <security-role>
      <role-name>admin</role-name>
   </security-role>
   <security-role>
      <role-name>user</role-name>
   </security-role>

   ...
</web-app>


JSON Web Signature and Encryption (JOSE JWT) is a new specification that can be used to encode content as a string and either digitally sign or encrypt it. I won't go over the spec here Do a Google search on it if you're interested

To encrypt content using JWE, use the org.jboss.resteasy.jose.jwe.JWEBuilder class. To decrypt content using JWE, use the org.jboss.resteasy.jose.jwe.JWEInput class. (TODO, write more doco here!) Here's an example:

            
   @Test
   public void testRSA() throws Exception
   {
      KeyPair keyPair = KeyPairGenerator.getInstance("RSA").generateKeyPair();

      String content = "Live long and prosper.";

      {
      String encoded = new JWEBuilder().contentBytes(content.getBytes()).RSA1_5((RSAPublicKey)keyPair.getPublic());
      System.out.println("encoded: " + encoded);
      byte[] raw = new JWEInput(encoded).decrypt((RSAPrivateKey)keyPair.getPrivate()).getRawContent();
      String from = new String(raw);
      Assert.assertEquals(content, from);
      }
      {
         String encoded = new JWEBuilder().contentBytes(content.getBytes()).RSA_OAEP((RSAPublicKey)keyPair.getPublic());
         System.out.println("encoded: " + encoded);
         byte[] raw = new JWEInput(encoded).decrypt((RSAPrivateKey)keyPair.getPrivate()).getRawContent();
         String from = new String(raw);
         Assert.assertEquals(content, from);
      }
      {
         String encoded = new JWEBuilder().contentBytes(content.getBytes()).A128CBC_HS256().RSA1_5((RSAPublicKey)keyPair.getPublic());
         System.out.println("encoded: " + encoded);
         byte[] raw = new JWEInput(encoded).decrypt((RSAPrivateKey)keyPair.getPrivate()).getRawContent();
         String from = new String(raw);
         Assert.assertEquals(content, from);
      }
      {
         String encoded = new JWEBuilder().contentBytes(content.getBytes()).A128CBC_HS256().RSA_OAEP((RSAPublicKey)keyPair.getPublic());
         System.out.println("encoded: " + encoded);
         byte[] raw = new JWEInput(encoded).decrypt((RSAPrivateKey)keyPair.getPrivate()).getRawContent();
         String from = new String(raw);
         Assert.assertEquals(content, from);
      }
   }

   @Test
   public void testDirect() throws Exception
   {
      String content = "Live long and prosper.";
      String encoded = new JWEBuilder().contentBytes(content.getBytes()).dir("geheim");
      System.out.println("encoded: " + encoded);
      byte[] raw = new JWEInput(encoded).decrypt("geheim").getRawContent();
      String from = new String(raw);
      Assert.assertEquals(content, from);

   }
        

Digital signatures allow you to protect the integrity of a message. They are used to verify that a message sent was sent by the actual user that sent the message and was modified in transit. Most web apps handle message integrity by using TLS, like HTTPS, to secure the connection between the client and server. Sometimes though, we have representations that are going to be forwarded to more than one recipient. Some representations may hop around from server to server. In this case, TLS is not enough. There needs to be a mechanism to verify who sent the original representation and that they actually sent that message. This is where digital signatures come in.

While the mime type multiple/signed exists, it does have drawbacks. Most importantly it requires the receiver of the message body to understand how to unpack. A receiver may not understand this mime type. A better approach would be to put signatures in an HTTP header so that receivers that don't need to worry about the digital signature, don't have to.

The email world has a nice protocol called Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM). Work is also being done to apply this header to protocols other than email (i.e. HTTP) through the DOSETA specifications. It allows you to sign a message body and attach the signature via a DKIM-Signature header. Signatures are calculated by first hashing the message body then combining this hash with an arbitrary set of metadata included within the DKIM-Signature header. You can also add other request or response headers to the calculation of the signature. Adding metadata to the signature calculation gives you a lot of flexibility to piggyback various features like expiration and authorization. Here's what an example DKIM-Signature header might look like.

DKIM-Signature: v=1;
                a=rsa-sha256;
                d=example.com;
                s=burke;
                c=simple/simple;
                h=Content-Type;
                x=0023423111111;
                bh=2342322111;
                b=M232234=

As you can see it is a set of name value pairs delimited by a ';'. While its not THAT important to know the structure of the header, here's an explanation of each parameter:

v

Protocol version. Always 1.

a

Algorithm used to hash and sign the message. RSA signing and SHA256 hashing is the only supported algorithm at the moment by RESTEasy.

d

Domain of the signer. This is used to identify the signer as well as discover the public key to use to verify the signature.

s

Selector of the domain. Also used to identify the signer and discover the public key.

c

Canonical algorithm. Only simple/simple is supported at the moment. Basically this allows you to transform the message body before calculating the hash

h

Semi-colon delimited list of headers that are included in the signature calculation.

x

When the signature expires. This is a numeric long value of the time in seconds since epoch. Allows signer to control when a signed message's signature expires

t

Timestamp of signature. Numeric long value of the time in seconds since epoch. Allows the verifier to control when a signature expires.

bh

Base 64 encoded hash of the message body.

b

Base 64 encoded signature.

To verify a signature you need a public key. DKIM uses DNS text records to discover a public key. To find a public key, the verifier concatenates the Selector (s parameter) with the domain (d parameter)

<selector>._domainKey.<domain>

It then takes that string and does a DNS request to retrieve a TXT record under that entry. In our above example burke._domainKey.example.com would be used as a string. This is a every interesting way to publish public keys. For one, it becomes very easy for verifiers to find public keys. There's no real central store that is needed. DNS is a infrastructure IT knows how to deploy. Verifiers can choose which domains they allow requests from. RESTEasy supports discovering public keys via DNS. It also instead allows you to discover public keys within a local Java KeyStore if you do not want to use DNS. It also allows you to plug in your own mechanism to discover keys.

If you're interested in learning the possible use cases for digital signatures, here's a blog you might find interesting.

To sign a request or response using the RESTEasy client or server framework you need to create an instance of org.jboss.resteasy.security.doseta.DKIMSignature. This class represents the DKIM-Signature header. You instantiate the DKIMSignature object and then set the "DKIM-Signature" header of the request or response. Here's an example of using it on the server-side:

import org.jboss.resteasy.security.doseta.DKIMSignature;
import java.security.PrivateKey;


@Path("/signed")
public static class SignedResource
{
   @GET
   @Path("manual")
   @Produces("text/plain")
   public Response getManual()
   {
      PrivateKey privateKey = ....; // get the private key to sign message
      
      DKIMSignature signature = new DKIMSignature();
      signature.setSelector("test");
      signature.setDomain("samplezone.org");
      signature.setPrivateKey(privateKey);

      Response.ResponseBuilder builder = Response.ok("hello world");
      builder.header(DKIMSignature.DKIM_SIGNATURE, signature);
      return builder.build();
   }
}

// client example

DKIMSignature signature = new DKIMSignature();
PrivateKey privateKey = ...; // go find it
signature.setSelector("test");
signature.setDomain("samplezone.org");
signature.setPrivateKey(privateKey);

ClientRequest request = new ClientRequest("http://...");
request.header("DKIM-Signature", signature);
request.body("text/plain", "some body to sign");
ClientResponse response = request.put();

To sign a message you need a PrivateKey. This can be generated by KeyTool or manually using regular, standard JDK Signature APIs. RESTEasy currently only supports RSA key pairs. The DKIMSignature class also allows you to add and control how various pieces of metadata are added to the DKIM-Signature header and the signature calculation. See the javadoc for more details.

If you are including more than one signature, then just add additional DKIMSignature instances to the headers of the request or response.

If you want fine grain control over verification, this is an API to verify signatures manually. Its a little tricky because you'll need the raw bytes of the HTTP message body in order to verify the signature. You can get at an unmarshalled message body as well as the underlying raw bytes by using a org.jboss.resteasy.spi.MarshalledEntity injection. Here's an example of doing this on the server side:

import org.jboss.resteasy.spi.MarshalledEntity;


@POST
@Consumes("text/plain")
@Path("verify-manual")
public void verifyManual(@HeaderParam("Content-Signature") DKIMSignature signature,
                         @Context KeyRepository repository, 
                         @Context HttpHeaders headers, 
                         MarshalledEntity<String> input) throws Exception
{
      Verifier verifier = new Verifier();
      Verification verification = verifier.addNew();
      verification.setRepository(repository);
      verification.setStaleCheck(true);
      verification.setStaleSeconds(100);
      try {
          verifier.verifySignature(headers.getRequestHeaders(), input.getMarshalledBytes, signature);
      } catch (SignatureException ex) {
      }
      System.out.println("The text message posted is: " + input.getEntity());
}

MarshalledEntity is a generic interface. The template parameter should be the Java type you want the message body to be converted into. You will also have to configure a KeyRepository. This is describe later in this chapter.

The client side is a little bit different:

ClientRequest request = new ClientRequest("http://localhost:9095/signed"));


ClientResponse<String> response = request.get(String.class);
Verifier verifier = new Verifier();
Verification verification = verifier.addNew();
verification.setRepository(repository);
response.getProperties().put(Verifier.class.getName(), verifier);

// signature verification happens when you get the entity
String entity = response.getEntity();

On the client side, you create a verifier and add it as a property to the ClientResponse. This will trigger the verification interceptors.

RESTEasy manages keys for you through a org.jboss.resteasy.security.doseta.KeyRepository. By default, the KeyRepository is backed by a Java KeyStore. Private keys are always discovered by looking into this KeyStore. Public keys may also be discovered via a DNS text (TXT) record lookup if configured to do so. You can also implement and plug in your own implementation of KeyRepository.

Next you need to configure the KeyRepository in your web.xml file so that it is created and made available to RESTEasy to discover private and public keys.You can reference a Java key store you want the Resteasy signature framework to use within web.xml using either resteasy.keystore.classpath or resteasy.keystore.filename context parameters. You must also specify the password (sorry its clear text) using the resteasy.keystore.password context parameter. The resteasy.context.objects is used to create the instance of the repository. For example:

    <context-param>
        <param-name>resteasy.doseta.keystore.classpath</param-name>
        <param-value>test.jks</param-value>
    </context-param>
    <context-param>
        <param-name>resteasy.doseta.keystore.password</param-name>
        <param-value>geheim</param-value>
    </context-param>
    <context-param>
        <param-name>resteasy.context.objects</param-name>
        <param-value>org.jboss.resteasy.security.doseta.KeyRepository : org.jboss.resteasy.security.doseta.ConfiguredDosetaKeyRepository</param-value>
    </context-param>

You can also manually register your own instance of a KeyRepository within an Application class. For example:

import org.jboss.resteasy.core.Dispatcher;
import org.jboss.resteasy.security.doseta.KeyRepository;
import org.jboss.resteasy.security.doseta.DosetaKeyRepository;

import javax.ws.rs.core.Application;
import javax.ws.rs.core.Context;

public class SignatureApplication extends Application
{
   private HashSet<Class<?>> classes = new HashSet<Class<?>>();
   private KeyRepository repository;

   public SignatureApplication(@Context Dispatcher dispatcher)
   {
      classes.add(SignedResource.class);

      repository = new DosetaKeyRepository();
      repository.setKeyStorePath("test.jks");
      repository.setKeyStorePassword("password");
      repository.setUseDns(false);
      repository.start();

      dispatcher.getDefaultContextObjects().put(KeyRepository.class, repository);
   }

   @Override
   public Set<Class<?>> getClasses()
   {
      return classes;
   }
}

On the client side, you can load a KeyStore manually, by instantiating an instance of org.jboss.resteasy.security.doseta.DosetaKeyRepository. You then set a request attribute, "org.jboss.resteasy.security.doseta.KeyRepository", with the value of the created instance. Use the ClientRequest.getAttributes() method to do this. For example:

DosetaKeyRepository keyRepository = new DoestaKeyRepository();
repository.setKeyStorePath("test.jks");
repository.setKeyStorePassword("password");
repository.setUseDns(false);
repository.start();

DKIMSignature signature = new DKIMSignature();
signature.setDomain("example.com");

ClientRequest request = new ClientRequest("http://...");
request.getAttributes().put(KeyRepository.class.getName(), repository);
request.header("DKIM-Signature", signatures);

Public keys can also be discover by a DNS text record lookup. You must configure web.xml to turn this feature:

    <context-param>
        <param-name>resteasy.doseta.use.dns</param-name>
        <param-value>true</param-value>
    </context-param>
    <context-param>
        <param-name>resteasy.doseta.dns.uri</param-name>
        <param-value>dns://localhost:9095</param-value>
    </context-param>

The resteasy.doseta.dns.uri context-param is optional and allows you to point to a specific DNS server to locate text records.

S/MIME (Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) is a standard for public key encryption and signing of MIME data. MIME data being a set of headers and a message body. Its most often seen in the email world when somebody wants to encrypt and/or sign an email message they are sending across the internet. It can also be used for HTTP requests as well which is what the RESTEasy integration with S/MIME is all about. RESTEasy allows you to easily encrypt and/or sign an email message using the S/MIME standard. While the API is described here, you may also want to check out the example projects that come with the RESTEasy distribution. It shows both Java and Python clients exchanging S/MIME formatted messages with a JAX-RS service.

While HTTPS is used to encrypt the entire HTTP message, S/MIME encryption is used solely for the message body of the HTTP request or response. This is very useful if you have a representation that may be forwarded by multiple parties (for example, HornetQ's REST Messaging integration!) and you want to protect the message from prying eyes as it travels across the network. RESTEasy has two different interfaces for encrypting message bodies. One for output, one for input. If your client or server wants to send an HTTP request or response with an encrypted body, it uses the org.jboss.resteasy.security.smime.EnvelopedOutput type. Encrypting a body also requires an X509 certificate which can be generated by the Java keytool command-line interface, or the openssl tool that comes installed on many OS's. Here's an example of using the EnvelopedOutput interface:

// server side   

@Path("encrypted")
@GET
public EnvelopedOutput getEncrypted()
{
   Customer cust = new Customer();
   cust.setName("Bill");
   
   X509Certificate certificate = ...;
   EnvelopedOutput output = new EnvelopedOutput(cust, MediaType.APPLICATION_XML_TYPE);
   output.setCertificate(certificate);
   return output;
}


// client side
X509Certificate cert = ...; 
Customer cust = new Customer();
cust.setName("Bill");
EnvelopedOutput output = new EnvelopedOutput(cust, "application/xml");
output.setCertificate(cert);
Response res = target.request().post(Entity.entity(output, "application/pkcs7-mime").post();

An EnvelopedOutput instance is created passing in the entity you want to marshal and the media type you want to marshal it into. So in this example, we're taking a Customer class and marshalling it into XML before we encrypt it. RESTEasy will then encrypt the EnvelopedOutput using the BouncyCastle framework's SMIME integration. The output is a Base64 encoding and would look something like this:

Content-Type: application/pkcs7-mime; smime-type=enveloped-data; name="smime.p7m"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="smime.p7m"

MIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHA6CAMIACAQAxgewwgekCAQAwUjBFMQswCQYDVQQGEwJBVTETMBEGA1UECBMK
U29tZS1TdGF0ZTEhMB8GA1UEChMYSW50ZXJuZXQgV2lkZ2l0cyBQdHkgTHRkAgkA7oW81OriflAw
DQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQAEgYCfnqPK/O34DFl2p2zm+xZQ6R+94BqZHdtEWQN2evrcgtAng+f2ltIL
xr/PiK+8bE8wDO5GuCg+k92uYp2rLKlZ5BxCGb8tRM4kYC9sHbH2dPaqzUBhMxjgWdMCX6Q7E130
u9MdGcP74Ogwj8fNl3lD4sx/0k02/QwgaukeY7uNHzCABgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwFAYIKoZIhvcNAwcE
CDRozFLsPnSgoIAEQHmqjSKAWlQbuGQL9w4nKw4l+44WgTjKf7mGWZvYY8tOCcdmhDxRSM1Ly682
Imt+LTZf0LXzuFGTsCGOUo742N8AAAAAAAAAAAAA

Decrypting an S/MIME encrypted message requires using the org.jboss.resteasy.security.smime.EnvelopedInput interface. You also need both the private key and X509Certificate used to encrypt the message. Here's an example:

// server side

@Path("encrypted")
@POST
public void postEncrypted(EnvelopedInput<Customer> input)
{
   PrivateKey privateKey = ...;
   X509Certificate certificate = ...;
   Customer cust = input.getEntity(privateKey, certificate);
}

// client side

ClientRequest request = new ClientRequest("http://localhost:9095/smime/encrypted");
EnvelopedInput input = request.getTarget(EnvelopedInput.class);
Customer cust = (Customer)input.getEntity(Customer.class, privateKey, cert);

Both examples simply call the getEntity() method passing in the PrivateKey and X509Certificate instances requires to decrypt the message. On the server side, a generic is used with EnvelopedInput to specify the type to marshal to. On the server side this information is passed as a parameter to getEntity(). The message is in MIME format: a Content-Type header and body, so the EnvelopedInput class now has everything it needs to know to both decrypt and unmarshall the entity.

S/MIME also allows you to digitally sign a message. It is a bit different than the Doseta Digital Signing Framework. Doseta is an HTTP header that contains the signature. S/MIME uses the multipart/signed data format which is a multipart message that contains the entity and the digital signature. So Doseta is a header, S/MIME is its own media type. Generally I would prefer Doseta as S/MIME signatures require the client to know how to parse a multipart message and Doseta doesn't. Its up to you what you want to use.

RESTEasy has two different interfaces for creating a multipart/signed message. One for input, one for output. If your client or server wants to send an HTTP request or response with an multipart/signed body, it uses the org.jboss.resteasy.security.smime.SignedOutput type. This type requires both the PrivateKey and X509Certificate to create the signature. Here's an example of signing an entity and sending a multipart/signed entity.

// server-side

   @Path("signed")
   @GET
   @Produces("multipart/signed")
   public SignedOutput getSigned()
   {
      Customer cust = new Customer();
      cust.setName("Bill");

      SignedOutput output = new SignedOutput(cust, MediaType.APPLICATION_XML_TYPE);
      output.setPrivateKey(privateKey);
      output.setCertificate(certificate);
      return output;
   }


// client side
      Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
      WebTarget target = client.target("http://localhost:9095/smime/signed");
      Customer cust = new Customer();
      cust.setName("Bill");
      SignedOutput output = new SignedOutput(cust, "application/xml");
      output.setPrivateKey(privateKey);
      output.setCertificate(cert);
      Response res = target.request().post(Entity.entity(output, "multipart/signed");

An SignedOutput instance is created passing in the entity you want to marshal and the media type you want to marshal it into. So in this example, we're taking a Customer class and marshalling it into XML before we sign it. RESTEasy will then sign the SignedOutput using the BouncyCastle framework's SMIME integration. The output iwould look something like this:

Content-Type: multipart/signed; protocol="application/pkcs7-signature"; micalg=sha1;  boundary="----=_Part_0_1083228271.1313024422098"

------=_Part_0_1083228271.1313024422098
Content-Type: application/xml
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

<customer name="bill"/>
------=_Part_0_1083228271.1313024422098
Content-Type: application/pkcs7-signature; name=smime.p7s; smime-type=signed-data
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="smime.p7s"
Content-Description: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature

MIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAqCAMIACAQExCzAJBgUrDgMCGgUAMIAGCSqGSIb3DQEHAQAAMYIBVzCCAVMC
AQEwUjBFMQswCQYDVQQGEwJBVTETMBEGA1UECBMKU29tZS1TdGF0ZTEhMB8GA1UEChMYSW50ZXJu
ZXQgV2lkZ2l0cyBQdHkgTHRkAgkA7oW81OriflAwCQYFKw4DAhoFAKBdMBgGCSqGSIb3DQEJAzEL
BgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHAYJKoZIhvcNAQkFMQ8XDTExMDgxMTAxMDAyMlowIwYJKoZIhvcNAQkEMRYE
FH32BfR1l1vzDshtQvJrgvpGvjADMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUABIGAL3KVi3ul9cPRUMYcGgQmWtsZ
0bLbAldO+okrt8mQ87SrUv2LGkIJbEhGHsOlsgSU80/YumP+Q4lYsVanVfoI8GgQH3Iztp+Rce2c
y42f86ZypE7ueynI4HTPNHfr78EpyKGzWuZHW4yMo70LpXhk5RqfM9a/n4TEa9QuTU76atAAAAAA
AAA=
------=_Part_0_1083228271.1313024422098--

To unmarshal and verify a signed message requires using the org.jboss.resteasy.security.smime.SignedInput interface. You only need the X509Certificate to verify the message. Here's an example of unmarshalling and verifying a multipart/signed entity.

// server side

   @Path("signed")
   @POST
   @Consumes("multipart/signed")
   public void postSigned(SignedInput<Customer> input) throws Exception
   {
      Customer cust = input.getEntity();
      if (!input.verify(certificate))
      {
         throw new WebApplicationException(500);
      }
   }

// client side
      Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
      WebTarget target = client.target("http://localhost:9095/smime/signed");
      SignedInput input = target.request().get(SignedInput.class);
      Customer cust = (Customer)input.getEntity(Customer.class)
      input.verify(cert);

To integrate with EJB you must first modify your EJB's published interfaces. RESTEasy currently only has simple portable integration with EJBs so you must also manually configure your RESTEasy WAR.

RESTEasy currently only has simple integration with EJBs. To make an EJB a JAX-RS resource, you must annotate an SLSB's @Remote or @Local interface with JAX-RS annotations:

@Local
@Path("/Library")
public interface Library {
   
   @GET
   @Path("/books/{isbn}")
   public String getBook(@PathParam("isbn") String isbn);
}

@Stateless
public class LibraryBean implements Library {

...

}

Next, in RESTEasy's web.xml file you must manually register the EJB with RESTEasy using the resteasy.jndi.resources <context-param>

<web-app>
   <display-name>Archetype Created Web Application</display-name>
   <context-param>
      <param-name>resteasy.jndi.resources</param-name>
      <param-value>LibraryBean/local</param-value>
   </context-param>

   ...
</web-app>

This is the only portable way we can offer EJB integration. Future versions of RESTEasy will have tighter integration with WildFly so you do not have to do any manual registrations or modifications to web.xml. For right now though, we're focusing on portability.

If you're using RESTEasy with an EAR and EJB, a good structure to have is:

my-ear.ear
|------myejb.jar
|------resteasy-jaxrs.war
       |
       ----WEB-INF/web.xml
       ----WEB-INF/lib (nothing)
|------lib/
       |
       ----All RESTEasy jar files

From the distribution, remove all libraries from WEB-INF/lib and place them in a common EAR lib. OR. Just place the RESTEasy jar dependencies in your application server's system classpath. (i.e. In JBoss put them in server/default/lib)

An example EAR project is available from our testsuite here.

RESTEasy integrates with Springframework in various forms. In this chapter we introduce different methods to integrate Springframework with RESTEasy.

For Maven users, you must use the resteasy-spring artifact. And here is the dependency you should use:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
    <artifactId>resteasy-spring</artifactId>
    <version>4.5.2.Final</version>
</dependency>

RESTEasy comes with its own ContextLoaderListener that registers a RESTEasy specific BeanPostProcessor that processes JAX-RS annotations when a bean is created by a BeanFactory. And it will automatically scan for @Provider and JAX-RS resource annotations on your bean class and register them as JAX-RS resources.

Here is the content that you should add into your web.xml file:

<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>

Please note that the SpringContextLoaderListener must be declared after ResteasyBootstrap as it uses ServletContext attributes initialized by it.

And you can configure the Springframework to scan for the JAX-RS resources and beans in a Spring configuration file. The content of the file is shown as follow:

<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"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context.xsd

		http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">

    <context:component-scan base-package="org.jboss.resteasy.examples.springbasic">
        <context:include-filter type="annotation" expression="javax.ws.rs.Path"/>
    </context:component-scan>
    <context:annotation-config/>

</beans>

Let's say the above file is named resteasy-spring-basic.xml, then in your web.xml the can be configured like this:

<context-param>
    <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
    <param-value>classpath:resteasy-spring-basic.xml</param-value>
</context-param>

In addition, you need to configure your RESTEasy servlet in web.xml. Here is the example:

<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>/rest/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

Instead of using HttpServletDispatcher for deployment, you can also use the FilterDispatcher in web.xml:

<filter>
    <filter-name>resteasy-filter</filter-name>
    <filter-class>
        org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.FilterDispatcher
    </filter-class>
</filter>

To see a complete example of the above basic usage, please check the Basic Example we provided.

If you do not want to use the SpringContextLoaderListener provided by RESTEasy, and want to create your bean factories, then you can manually register the RESTEasy BeanFactoryPostProcessor by creating an instance of the RESTEasy SpringBeanProcessor.

And you must configure the RestasyBootstrap into the scope to create the ResteasyDeployment so the relative classes can be fetched from ServletContext.

There is also a SpringBeanProcessorServletAware class that implements the ServletContextAware interface provided by Springframework. The SpringBeanProcessorServletAware can be used to fetch the Registry and ResteasyProviderFactory from the ServletContext.

To demonstrate the above process, we have also provide an example. Please check the Spring and Resteasy Customized Example we provided.

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 MVC framework. Generally speaking, JAX-RS can be combined with a Spring DispatcherServlet and used in the same web application.

An application combined in this way allows you to dispatch to either the Spring controller or the JAX-RS resource using the same base URL. In addition you can use the Spring ModelAndView objects as return arguments from @GET resource methods.

The setup requires you to use 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 version="3.0" xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
         xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
         xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd">
    <display-name>resteasy-spring-mvc</display-name>

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>resteasy-spring-mvc</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.jboss.resteasy.springmvc.ResteasySpringDispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
        <init-param>
            <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name>
            <param-value>classpath:resteasy-spring-mvc-servlet.xml</param-value>
        </init-param>
    </servlet>

    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>resteasy-spring-mvc</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/rest/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

</web-app>

Then within the resteasy-spring-mvc-servlet.xml, it should 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"/>
....

And then you need to tell Spring the package to scan for your JAX-RS resource classes:

<context:component-scan base-package="org.jboss.resteasy.examples.springmvc"/>
<context:annotation-config/>

Above is the basic configuration for Spring MVC framework. To see a complete example, please check the Spring MVC Integration Example we provided.

In addition, A javax.ws.rs.core.Application subclass can be combined with a Spring DispatcherServlet and used in the same web application.

A servlet definition is required for both the Spring DispatcherServlet and the javax.ws.rs.core.Application subclass in the web.xml, as well as RESTEasy Configuration Switch, resteasy.scan.resources. Here is an example of the minimum configuration information needed in the web.xml.

<web-app>
    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>mySpring</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class>
    </servlet>
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>mySpring</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>myAppSubclass</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.my.app.EntryApplicationSubclass</servlet-class>
    </servlet>
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>myAppSubclass</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

    <!-- required RESTEasy Configuration Switch directs auto scanning
         of the archive for JAX-RS resource files
    -->
    <context-param>
        <param-name>resteasy.scan.resources</param-name>
        <param-value>true</param-value>
    </context-param>
</web-app>

Note that RESTEasy parameters like resteasy.scan.resources may be set in a variety of ways. See Section 3.4, “Configuration” for more information about application configuration.

If your web application contains JAX-RS provider classes the RESTEasy Configuration Switch, resteasy.scan.providers, will also be needed. And if the url-pattern for the JAX-RS Application subclass is other than /* you will need to declare the RESTEasy Configuration Switch, resteasy.servlet.mapping.prefix. This switch can be declare either as a context-param or as a servlet init-param. It's value must be the text that preceeds the /*. Here is an example of such a web.xml:

<web-app>
    <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>

    <servlet>
        <servlet-name>myAppSubclass</servlet-name>
        <servlet-class>org.my.app.EntryApplicationSubclass</servlet-class>

        <init-param>
            <param-name>resteasy.servlet.mapping.prefix</param-name>
            <param-value>/resources</param-value>
        </init-param>
    </servlet>
    <servlet-mapping>
        <servlet-name>myAppSubclass</servlet-name>
        <url-pattern>/resources/*</url-pattern>
    </servlet-mapping>

    <context-param>
        <param-name>resteasy.scan.resources</param-name>
        <param-value>true</param-value>
    </context-param>
    <context-param>
        <param-name>resteasy.scan.providers</param-name>
        <param-value>true</param-value>
    </context-param>
</web-app>

Above are the usages of RESTEasy Spring MVC integration usages.

We provide a undertow-based embedded spring container module, called "resteasy-undertow-spring". To use it, you need to add the following additional dependencies into your project:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
  <artifactId>resteasy-undertow</artifactId>
  <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
  <artifactId>resteasy-undertow-spring</artifactId>
  <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

In the "resteasy-undertow-spring" module, we have a embedded server class called "UndertowJaxrsSpringServer". In its "undertowDeployment(...)" method, it will accept the spring context configuration file:

public DeploymentInfo undertowDeployment(String contextConfigLocation, String mapping)

We can provide a minimal spring config like the following:

<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
        ">
    <context:component-scan base-package="org.jboss.resteasy.springmvc.test"/>
    <context:annotation-config/>
    <import resource="classpath:springmvc-resteasy.xml"/>
</beans>

In above configuration, the "springmvc-resteasy.xml" in the classpath is provided by the "resteasy-spring" module by default. Let's name the above configuration file with "spring-servlet.xml", and the following code will include it and setup the UndertowJaxrsSpringServer and start it:

UndertowJaxrsSpringServer server = new UndertowJaxrsSpringServer();
server.start();

DeploymentInfo deployment = server.undertowDeployment("classpath:spring-servlet.xml", null);
deployment.setDeploymentName(BasicSpringTest.class.getName());
deployment.setContextPath("/");
deployment.setClassLoader(BasicSpringTest.class.getClassLoader());

server.deploy(deployment);

Above is the code example to setup and start UndertowJaxrsSpringServer. To see a complete example, please check the Demo Of Undertow Embedded Spring Container as usage example.

RESTEasy also provides the ability to process Spring Web REST annotations (i.e. Spring classes annotated with @RestController) and handle related REST requests without delegating to Spring MVC. This functionality is currently experimental.

In order for RESTEasy to be able to process Spring @RestController, you first need to include the following dependency.

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
    <artifactId>resteasy-spring-web</artifactId>
    <version>4.5.2.Final</version>
</dependency>

Currently RESTEasy does not auto-scan for @RestController annotated classes, so you need to add all @RestController annotated classes to your web.xml file as shown in the following example.

<web-app>
   <display-name>RESTEasy application using Spring REST annotations</display-name>

    <context-param>
        <param-name>resteasy.scanned.resource.classes.with.builder</param-name>
        <param-value>org.jboss.resteasy.spi.metadata.SpringResourceBuilder:org.example.Controller1,org.example.Controller2</param-value>
    </context-param>

   ...
</web-app>

In the example above, Controller1 and Controller2 are registered and are expected to be annotated with @RestController.

The list of the currently supported annotations can be found below:


Furthermore, the use of org.springframework.http.ResponseEntity as a return value is supported as is the use of javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest and javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse as method parameters.

To see an example of the usage, please check the RESTEasy support of Spring REST annotations sample project we provided.

The RESTEasy project has its support for Spring Boot integration. It was originally developed by PayPal team and has been donated to RESTEasy community. The project is currently maintained here: RESTEasy Spring Boot Starter Project.

Here is the usage in brief:

Firstly, add dependency to your Spring Boot application:

<dependency>
   <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
   <artifactId>resteasy-spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
   <version>${latest_version_of_restesy_spring_boot}</version>
   <scope>runtime</scope>
</dependency>

And then you can use Spring annotation @Component to register your JAX-RS Application class:

package com.sample.app;

import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;
import javax.ws.rs.ApplicationPath;
import javax.ws.rs.core.Application;

@Component
@ApplicationPath("/sample-app/")
public class JaxrsApplication extends Application {
}

Finally, to register JAX-RS resources and providers, just define them as Spring beans, and they will be automatically registered. Notice that JAX-RS resources can be singleton or request scoped, while JAX-RS providers must be singletons.

To see complete examples, please check the sample-app in the project codebase.

Note. As noted inSection 3.1.2, “Upgrading RESTEasy within WildFly”, the RESTEasy distribution comes with a zip file called resteasy-jboss-modules-<version>.zip, which can be unzipped into the modules/system/layers/base/ directory of WildFly to upgrade to a new version of RESTEasy. Because of the way resteasy-spring is used in WildFly, after unzipping the zip file, it is also necessary to remove the old resteasy-spring jar from modules/system/layers/base/org/jboss/resteasy/resteasy-spring/main/bundled/resteasy-spring-jar.

This module provides integration with JSR-299 (Contexts and Dependency Injection for the Java EE platform)

RESTEasy has some simple integration with Guice 3.0. RESTEasy will scan the binding types for a Guice Module for @Path and @Provider annotations. It will register these bindings with RESTEasy. The guice-hello project that comes in the RESTEasy examples/ directory gives a nice example of this.

@Path("hello")
public class HelloResource
{
   @GET
   @Path("{name}")
   public String hello(@PathParam("name") final String name) {
      return "Hello " + name;
   }
}

First you start off by specifying a JAX-RS resource class. The HelloResource is just that. Next you create a Guice Module class that defines all your bindings:

import com.google.inject.Module;
import com.google.inject.Binder;

public class HelloModule implements Module
{
    public void configure(final Binder binder)
    {
       binder.bind(HelloResource.class);
    }
}

You put all these classes somewhere within your WAR WEB-INF/classes or in a JAR within WEB-INF/lib. Then you need to create your web.xml file. You need to use the GuiceResteasyBootstrapServletContextListener as follows


<web-app>
    <display-name>Guice Hello</display-name>

    <context-param>
        <param-name>resteasy.guice.modules</param-name>
        <param-value>org.jboss.resteasy.examples.guice.hello.HelloModule</param-value>
    </context-param>

    <listener>
        <listener-class>
            org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.guice.GuiceResteasyBootstrapServletContextListener
        </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>

GuiceResteasyBootstrapServletContextListener is a subclass of ResteasyBootstrap, so you can use any other RESTEasy configuration option within your web.xml file. Also notice that there is a resteasy.guice.modules context-param. This can take a comma delimited list of class names that are Guice Modules.

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!

            Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
            WebTarget 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.

One RESTEasy extension to the client API is the ability to specify that requests should be sent in "chunked" transfer mode. There are two ways of doing that. One is to configure an org.jboss.resteasy.client.jaxrs.ResteasyWebTarget so that all requests to that target are sent in chunked mode:

      ResteasyClient client = (ResteasyClient)ClientBuilder.newClient();
      ResteasyWebTarget target = client.target("http://localhost:8081/test");
      target.setChunked(b.booleanValue());
      Invocation.Builder request = target.request();
        

Alternatively, it is possible to configure a particular request to be sent in chunked mode:

      ResteasyClient client = (ResteasyClient)ClientBuilder.newClient();
      ResteasyWebTarget target = client.target("http://localhost:8081/test");
      ClientInvocationBuilder request = (ClientInvocationBuilder) target.request();
      request.setChunked(b);
        

Note that org.jboss.resteasy.client.jaxrs.internal.ClientInvocationBuilder, unlike javax.ws.rs.client.Invocation.Builder, is a RESTEasy class.

Note. The ability to send in chunked mode depends on the underlying transport layer; in particular, it depends on which implementation of org.jboss.resteasy.client.jaxrs.ClientHttpEngine is being used. Currently, only the default implementation, ApacheHttpClient43Engine, supports chunked mode. See Section Apache HTTP Client 4.x and other backends for more information.

Note

To follow REST principles and avoid introducing state management in applications, javax.ws.rs.client.Client instances do not provide support for cookie management by default. However, you can enable it if necessary using ResteasyClientBuilder:

				Client client = ((ResteasyClientBuilder) ClientBuilder.newBuilder()).enableCookieManagement().build();
			

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 = ClientBuilder.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 = (ResteasyClient)ClientBuilder.newClient();
            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.

A further extension implemented by the RESTEasy client proxy framework is the "response proxy facility", where a client proxy method returns an interface that represents the information contained in a javax.ws.rs.core.Response. Such an interface must be annotated with @ResponseObject from package org.jboss.resteasy.annotations, and its methods may be further annotated with @Body, @LinkHeaderParam, and @Status from the same package, as well as javax.ws.rs.HeaderParam. Consider the following example.

   @ResponseObject
   public interface TestResponseObject {
      
      @Status
      int status();

      @Body
      String body();

      @HeaderParam("Content-Type")
      String contentType();
      
      ClientResponse response();
   }

   @Path("test")
   public interface TestClient {
   
      @GET
      TestResponseObject get();
   }

   @Path("test")
   public static class TestResource {

      @GET
      @Produces("text/plain")
      public String get() {
         return "ABC";
      }
   }
        

Here, TestClient will define the client side proxy for TestResource. Note that TestResource.get() returns a String but the proxy based on TestClient will return a TestResponseObject on a call to get():

      Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
      TestClient ClientInterface = ProxyBuilder.builder(TestClient.class, client.target("http://localhost:8081")).build();
      TestResponseObject tro = ClientInterface.get();
        

The methods of TestResponseObject provide access to various pieces of information about the response received from TestResponse.get(). This is where the annotations on those methods come into play. status() is annotated with @Status, and a call to status() returns the HTTP status. Similarly, body() returns the returned entity, and contentType() returns the value of the response header Content-Type:

      System.out.println("status: " + tro.status());
      System.out.println("entity: " + tro.body());
      System.out.println("Content-Type: " + tro.contentType());
        

will yield

status: 200
entity: ABC
Content-Type: text/plain;charset=UTF-8        
        

Note that there is one other method in TestResponseObject, response(), that has no annotation. When RESTEasy sees a method in an interface annotated with @ResponseObject that returns a javax.ws.rs.core.Response (or a subclass thereof), it will return a org.jboss.resteasy.client.jaxrs.internal.ClientResponse. For example,

      ClientResponse clientResponse =  tro.response();
      System.out.println("Content-Length: " + clientResponse.getLength());
        

Perhaps the most interesting piece of the response proxy facility is the treatment of methods annotated with @LinkHeaderParam. Its simplest use is to assist in accessing a javax.ws.rs.core.Link returned by a resource method. For example, let's add

      @GET
      @Path("/link-header")
      public Response getWithHeader(@Context UriInfo uri) {
         URI subUri = uri.getAbsolutePathBuilder().path("next-link").build();
         Link link = new LinkBuilderImpl().uri(subUri).rel("nextLink").build();
         return Response.noContent().header("Link", link.toString()).build();
      }
        

to TestResource, add

       @GET
       @Path("link-header")
       ResponseObjectInterface performGetBasedOnHeader();
        

to ClientInterface, and add

       @LinkHeaderParam(rel = "nextLink")
       URI nextLink();
        

to ResponseObjectInterface. Then calling

      ResponseObjectInterface obj = ClientInterface.performGetBasedOnHeader();
      System.out.println("nextLink(): " + obj.nextLink());
        

will access the LinkHeader returned by TestResource.getWithHeader():

nextlink: http://localhost:8081/test/link-header/next-link
        

Last but not least, let's add

      @GET
      @Produces("text/plain")
      @Path("/link-header/next-link")
      public String getHeaderForward() {
         return "forwarded";
      }
        

to TestResource and

       @GET
       @LinkHeaderParam(rel = "nextLink")
       String followNextLink();
        

to ResponseObjectInterface. Note that, unlike ResponseObjectInterface.nextLink(), followNextLink() is annotated with @GET; that is, it qualifies as (the client proxy to) a resource method. When executing followNextLink(), RESTEasy will retrieve the value of the Link returned by TestResource.getWithHeader() and then will make a GET invocation on the URL in that Link. Calling

      System.out.println("followNextLink(): " + obj.followNextLink());
        

causes RESTEasy to retrieve the URL http://localhost:8081/test/link-header/next-link from the call to TestResource.getWithHeader() and then perform a GET on it, invoking TestResource.getHeaderForward():

followNextLink(): forwarded
        

Note. This facility for extracting a URL and following it is a step toward supporting the Representation State Transfer principle of HATEOAS. For more information, see RESTful Java with JAX-RS 2.0, 2nd Edition by Bill Burke.

Network communication between the client and server is handled by default in RESTEasy. The interface between the RESTEasy Client Framework and the network is defined by RESTEasy's ClientHttpEngine interface. RESTEasy ships with multiple implementations of this interface.

The default implementation is ApacheHttpClient43Engine, which uses version 4.3 of the HttpClient from the Apache HttpComponents project.

ApacheHttpAsyncClient4Engine, instead, is built on top of HttpAsyncClient (still from the Apache HttpComponents project) with internally dispatches requests using a non-blocking IO model.

JettyClientEngine is built on top of Eclipse Jetty HTTP engine, which is possibly an interesting option for those already running on the Jetty server.

VertxClientHttpEngine is built on top of Eclipse Vert.x, which provides a non-blocking HTTP client based on Vert.x framework.

ReactorNettyClientHttpEngine is built on top of Reactor Netty, which provides a non-blocking HTTP client based on Netty framework.

Finally, InMemoryClientEngine is an implementation that dispatches requests to a server in the same JVM and URLConnectionEngine is an implementation that uses java.net.HttpURLConnection.


The RESTEasy Client Framework can also be customized. The user can provide their own implementations of ClientHttpEngine to the ResteasyClient.

ClientHttpEngine myEngine = new ClientHttpEngine() {
    protected SSLContext sslContext;
    protected HostnameVerifier hostnameVerifier;


    @Override
    public ClientResponse invoke(ClientInvocation request) {
        // implement your processing code and return a
        // org.jboss.resteasy.client.jaxrs.internal.ClientResponse
        // object.
    }

    @Override
    public SSLContext getSslContext() {
       return sslContext;
    }

    @Override
    public HostnameVerifier getHostnameVerifier() {
       return hostnameVerifier;
    }

    @Override
    public void close() {
       // do nothing
    }
};

ResteasyClient client = ((ResteasyClientBuilder)ClientBuilder.newBuilder()).httpEngine(myEngine).build();
       

RESTEasy and HttpClient make reasonable default decisions so that it is possible to use the client framework without ever referencing HttpClient. For some applications it may be necessary to drill down into the HttpClient details. ApacheHttpClient43Engine 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.

HttpContextProvider is a RESTEasy provided interface through which a custom HttpContext is supplied to ApacheHttpClient43Engine.

package org.jboss.resteasy.client.jaxrs.engines;

import org.apache.http.protocol.HttpContext;

public interface HttpContextProvider {
   HttpContext getContext();
}
       

Here is an example of providing a custom HttpContext

DefaultHttpClient httpClient = new DefaultHttpClient();
ApacheHttpClient43Engine engine = new ApacheHttpClient43Engine(httpClient,
   new HttpContextProvider() {
           @Override
           public HttpContext getContext() {
              // 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
              BasicScheme basicAuth = new BasicScheme();
              authCache.put(getHttpHost(url), basicAuth);
              // 3. Add AuthCache to the execution context
              BasicHttpContext localContext = new BasicHttpContext();
              localContext.setAttribute(ClientContext.AUTH_CACHE, authCache);
              return localContext;
           }
});
       

To enable SSL on client, a ClientHttpEngine containing a SSLContext can be created to build client as in the following example:

ClientHttpEngine myEngine = new ClientHttpEngine() {
   ...
   public void setSslContext(SSLContext sslContext) {
      this.sslContext = sslContext;
   }

   @Override
   public HostnameVerifier getHostnameVerifier() {
      return hostnameVerifier;
   }
};
myEngine.setSslContext(mySslContext)
ResteasyClient client = ((ResteasyClientBuilder)ClientBuilder.newBuilder()).httpEngine(myEngine).build();
            

An alternative is to set up a keystore and truststore and pass a custom SslContext to ClientBuilder:

Client sslClient = ClientBuilder.newBuilder().sslContext(mySslContext).build();
            

If you don't want to create a SSLContext, you can build client with a keystore and truststore. Note if both SSLContext and keystore/truststore are configured, the later will be ignored by Resteasy ClientBuilder.

Client sslClient = ClientBuilder.newBuilder().keystore(keystore,mypassword).
                      trustKeystore(trustStore).build();
            

During handshaking, a custom HostNameVerifier can be called to allow the connection if URL's hostname and the server's identification hostname match.

Client sslClient =  ((ResteasyClientBuilder)ClientBuilder.newBuilder()).sslContext(mysslContext)
                       .hostnameVerifier(myhostnameVerifier).build();
            

Resteasy provides another simple way to set up a HostnameVerifier. It allows configuring ResteasyClientBuilder with a HostnameVerificationPolicy without creating a custom HostNameVerifier:

Client sslClient =  ((ResteasyClientBuilder)ClientBuilder.newBuilder()).sslContext(mysslContext)
                       .hostnameVerification(ResteasyClientBuilder.HostnameVerificationPolicy.ANY).build();
            

  • Setting HostnameVerificationPolicy.ANY will allow all connections without a check.
  • HostnameVerificationPolicy.WILDCARD only allows wildcards in subdomain names i.e. *.foo.com.
  • HostnameVerificationPolicy.STRICT checks if DNS names match the content of the Public Suffix List (https://publicsuffix.org/list/public_suffix_list.dat). Please note if this public suffix list isn't the check you want, you should create your own HostNameVerifier instead of this policy setting.

The RESTEasy Client framework automatically creates and properly configures the underlying Apache HTTP Client engine. When the ApacheHttpClient43Engine is manually created, though, the user can either let it build and use a default HttpClient instance or provide a custom one:

public ApacheHttpClient43Engine() {
   ...
}

public ApacheHttpClient43Engine(HttpClient httpClient) {
   ...
}

public ApacheHttpClient43Engine(HttpClient httpClient, boolean closeHttpClient) {
   ...
}
     

The closeHttpClient parameter on the last constructor above allows controlling whether the Apache HttpClient is to be closed upon engine finalization. The default value is true. When a custom HttpClient instance is not provided, the default instance will always be closed together with the engine.

For more information about HttpClient (4.x), see the documentation at http://hc.apache.org/httpcomponents-client-ga/tutorial/html/.

Note. It is important to understand the difference between "releasing" a connection and "closing" a connection. Releasing a connection makes it available for reuse. Closing a connection frees its resources and makes it unusable.

If an execution of a request or a call on a proxy returns a class other than Response, then RESTEasy will take care of releasing the connection. For example, in the fragments

WebTarget target = client.target("http://localhost:8081/customer/123");
String answer = target.request().get(String.class);
     

or

ResteasyWebTarget target = client.target("http://localhost:8081/customer/123");
RegistryStats stats = target.proxy(RegistryStats.class);
RegistryData data = stats.get();
     

RESTEasy will release the connection under the covers. The only counterexample is the case in which the response is an instance of InputStream, which must be closed explicitly.

On the other hand, if the result of an invocation is an instance of Response, then Response.close() method must be used to released the connection.

WebTarget target = client.target("http://localhost:8081/customer/123");
Response response = target.request().get();
System.out.println(response.getStatus());
response.close();
     

You should probably execute this in a try/finally block. Again, releasing a connection only makes it available for another use. It does not normally close the socket.

On the other hand, ApacheHttpClient43Engine.finalize() will close any open sockets, unless the user set closeHttpClient as false when building the engine, in which case he is responsible for closing the connections.

Note that if ApacheHttpClient43Engine has created its own instance of HttpClient, it is not necessary to wait for finalize() to close open sockets. The ClientHttpEngine interface has a close() method for this purpose.

If your javax.ws.rs.client.Client class has created the engine automatically for you, you should call Client.close() and this will clean up any socket connections.

Finally, given having explicit finalize() methods can badly affect performances, the org.jboss.resteasy.client.jaxrs.engines.ManualClosingApacheHttpClient43Engine flavour of org.jboss.resteasy.client.jaxrs.engines.ApacheHttpClient43Engine can be used. With that the user is always responsible for calling close() as no finalize() is there to do that before object garbage collection.

RESTEasy's default async engine implementation class is ApacheHttpAsyncClient4Engine. It can be set as the active engine by calling method useAsyncHttpEngine in ResteasyClientBuilder.

    Client asyncClient = ((ResteasyClientBuilder)ClientBuilder.newBuilder()).useAsyncHttpEngine()
                             .build();
    Future<Response> future = asyncClient
                             .target("http://locahost:8080/test").request()
                             .async().get();
    Response res = future.get();
    Assert.assertEquals(HttpResponseCodes.SC_OK, res.getStatus());
    String entity = res.readEntity(String.class);
        

As the microservices style of system architecture (see, for example, Microservices by Martin Fowler) gains increasing traction, new API standards are coming along to support it. One set of such standards comes from the Microprofile Project supported by the Eclipse Foundation, and among those is one, MicroProfile Rest Client, of particular interest to RESTEasy and JAX-RS. In fact, it is intended to be based on, and consistent with, JAX-RS, and it includes ideas already implemented in RESTEasy. For a more detailed description of MicroProfile Rest Client, see https://github.com/eclipse/microprofile-rest-client. In particular, the API code is in https://github.com/eclipse/microprofile-rest-client/tree/master/api. and the specification is in https://github.com/eclipse/microprofile-rest-client/tree/master/spec.

One of the central ideas in MicroProfile Rest Client is a version of distributed object communication, a concept implemented in, among other places, CORBA, Java RMI, the JBoss Remoting project, and RESTEasy. Consider the resource

@Path("resource")
public class TestResource {

   @Path("test")
   @GET
   String test() {
      return "test";
   }
}

The JAX-RS native way of accessing TestResource looks like

Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
String response = client.target("http://localhost:8081/test").request().get(String.class);

The call to TestResource.test() is not particularly onerous, but calling test() directly allows a more natural syntax. That is exactly what Microprofile Rest Client supports:

@Path("resource")
public interface TestResourceIntf {

   @Path("test")
   @GET
   public String test();
}
   
TestResourceIntf service = RestClientBuilder.newBuilder()
                              .baseUrl("http://localhost:8081/")
                              .build(TestResourceIntf.class);
String s = service.test();

The first four lines of executable code are spent creating a proxy, service, that implements TestResourceIntf, but once that is done, calls on TestResource can be made very naturally in terms of TestResourceIntf, as illustrated by the call service.test().

Beyond the natural syntax, another advantage of proxies is the way the proxy construction process quietly gathers useful information from the implemented interface and makes it available for remote invocations. Consider a more elaborate version of TestResourceIntf:

@Path("resource")
public interface TestResourceIntf2 {

   @Path("test/{path}")
   @Consumes("text/plain")
   @Produces("text/html")
   @POST
   public String test(@PathParam("path") String path, @QueryParam("query") String query, String entity);
}

Calling service.test("p", "q", "e") results in an HTTP message that looks like

POST /resource/test/p/?query=q HTTP/1.1
Accept: text/html
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Length: 1

e

The HTTP verb is derived from the @POST annotation, the request URI is derived from the two instances of the @Path annotation (one on the class, one on the method) plus the first and second parameters of test(), the Accept header is derived from the @Produces annotation, and the Content-Type header is derived from the @Consumes annotation,

Using the JAX-RS API, service.test("p", "q", "e") would look like the more verbose

Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
String response = client.target("http://localhost:8081/resource/test/p")
                     .queryParam("query", "q")
                     .request()
                     .accept("text/html")
                     .post(Entity.entity("e", "text/plain"), String.class);

One other basic facility offered by MicroProfile Rest Client is the ability to configure the client environment by registering providers:

TestResourceIntf service = RestClientBuilder.newBuilder()
                              .baseUrl("http://localhost:8081/")
                              .register(MyClientResponseFilter.class)
                              .register(MyMessageBodyReader.class)
                              .build(TestResourceIntf.class);

Naturally, the registered providers should be relevant to the client environment, rather than, say, a ContainerResponseFilter.

Note

So far, the MicroProfile Rest Client should look familiar to anyone who has used the RESTEasy client proxy facility (Section ""RESTEasy Proxy Framework"). The construction in the previous listing would look like

ResteasyClient client = (ResteasyClient) ResteasyClientBuilder.newClient();
TestResourceIntf service = client.target("http://localhost:8081/")
                              .register(MyClientResponseFilter.class)
                              .register(MyMessageBodyReader.class)
                              .proxy(TestResourceIntf.class);

in RESTEasy.

Some concepts in MicroProfile Rest Client do not appear in either JAX-RS or RESTEasy.

An instance of org.eclipse.microprofile.rest.client.ext.ClientHeadersFactory,

public interface ClientHeadersFactory {

/**
 * Updates the HTTP headers to send to the remote service. Note that providers
 * on the outbound processing chain could further update the headers.
 *
 * @param incomingHeaders - the map of headers from the inbound JAX-RS request. This will
 * be an empty map if the associated client interface is not part of a JAX-RS request.
 * @param clientOutgoingHeaders - the read-only map of header parameters specified on the
 * client interface.
 * @return a map of HTTP headers to merge with the clientOutgoingHeaders to be sent to
 * the remote service.
 */
MultivaluedMap<String, String> update(MultivaluedMap<String, String> incomingHeaders,
                                      MultivaluedMap<String, String> clientOutgoingHeaders);
}

if activated, can do a bulk transfer of incoming headers to an outgoing request. The default instance org.eclipse.microprofile.rest.client.ext.DefaultClientHeadersFactoryImpl will return a map consisting of those incoming headers listed in the comma separated configuration property

org.eclipse.microprofile.rest.client.propagateHeaders

In order for an instance of ClientHeadersFactory to be activated, the interface must be annotated with org.eclipse.microprofile.rest.client.annotation.RegisterClientHeaders. Optionally, the annotation may include a value field set to an implementation class; without an explicit value, the default instance will be used.

Although a ClientHeadersFactory is not officially designated as a provider, it is now (as of MicroProfile REST Client specification 1.4) subject to injection. In particular, when an instance of ClientHeadersFactory is managed by CDI, then CDI injection is mandatory. When a REST Client is executing in the context of a JAX-RS implementation, then @Context injection into a ClientHeadersFactory is currently optional. RESTEasy supports CDI injection and does not currently support @Context injection.

MicroProfile Rest Client mandates that implementations must support CDI injection of proxies. At first, the concept might seem odd in that CDI is more commonly available on the server side. However, the idea is very consistent with the microservices philosophy. If an application is composed of a number of small services, then it is to be expected that services will often act as clients to other services.

CDI (Contexts and Dependency Injection) is a fairly rich subject and beyond the scope of this Guide. For more information, see JSR 365: Contexts and Dependency Injection for JavaTM 2.0 (the specification), Java EE 8 Tutorial, or WELD - CDI Reference Implementation.

The fundamental thing to know about CDI injection is that annotating a variable with javax.inject.Inject will lead the CDI runtime (if it is present and enabled) to create an object of the appropriate type and assign it to the variable. For example, in

   public interface Book {
      public String getTitle();
      public void setTitle(String title);
   }

   public class BookImpl implements Book {
      
      private String title;

      @Override
      public String getTitle() {
         return title;
      }
      
      @Override
      public void setTitle(String title) {
         this.title = title;
      }
   }
   
   public class Author {
      
      @Inject private Book book; 
      
      public Book getBook() {
         return book;
      }
   }

The CDI runtime will create an instance of BookImpl and assign it to the private field book when an instance of Author is created;

In this example, the injection is done because BookImpl is assignable to book, but greater discrimination can be imposed by annotating the interface and the field with qualifier annotations. For the injection to be legal, every qualifier on the field must be present on the injected interface. For example:

   @Qualifier
   @Target({ElementType.TYPE, ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.PARAMETER, ElementType.FIELD})
   @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
   public @interface Text {}
   
   @Qualifier
   @Target({ElementType.TYPE, ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.PARAMETER, ElementType.FIELD})
   @Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
   public @interface Graphic {}
   
   @Text
   public class TextBookImpl extends BookImpl { }
   
   @Graphic
   public class GraphicNovelImpl extends BookImpl { }
   
   public class Genius {
      
      @Inject @Graphic Book book;
   }

Here, the class TextBookImpl is annotated with the @Text qualifier and GraphicNovelImpl is annotated with @Graphic. It follows that an instance of GraphicNovelImpl is eligible for assignment to the field book in the Genius class, but an instance of TextBookImpl is not.

Now, in MicroProfile Rest Client, any interface that is to be managed as a CDI bean must be annotated with @RegisterRestClient:

   @Path("resource")
   @RegisterProvider(MyClientResponseFilter.class)
   public static class TestResourceImpl {

      @Inject TestDataBase db;
      
      @Path("test/{path}")
      @Consumes("text/plain")
      @Produces("text/html")
      @POST
      public String test(@PathParam("path") String path, @QueryParam("query") String query, String entity) {
         return db.getByName(query);
      }
   }

   @Path("database")
   @RegisterRestClient
   public interface TestDataBase {
      
      @Path("")
      @POST
      public String getByName(String name);
   }

Here, the MicroProfile Rest Client implementation creates a proxy for a TestDataBase service, allowing easy access by TestResourceImpl. Notice, though, that there's no indication of where the TestDataBase implementation lives. That information can be supplied by the optional @RegisterProvider parameter baseUri:

   @Path("database")
   @RegisterRestClient(baseUri="https://localhost:8080/webapp")
   public interface TestDataBase {
      
      @Path("")
      @POST
      public String getByName(String name);
   }

which indicates that an implementation of TestDatabase can be accessed at https://localhost:8080/webapp. The same information can be supplied externally with the system variable

<fqn of TestDataBase>/mp-rest/uri=<URL>

or

<fqn of TestDataBase>/mp-rest/url=<URL>

which will override the value hardcoded in @RegisterRestClient. For example,

com.bluemonkeydiamond.TestDatabase/mp-rest/url=https://localhost:8080/webapp

A number of other properties will be examined in the course of creating the proxy, including, for example

com.bluemonkeydiamond.TestDatabase/mp-rest/providers

a comma separated list of provider classes to be registered with the proxy. See the MicroProfile Client documentation for more such properties.

These properties can be simplified through the use of the configKey field in @RegisterRestClient. For example, setting the configKey as in

@Path("database")
@RegisterRestClient(configKey="bmd")
public interface TestDataBase { ... }

allows the use of properties like

bmd/mp-rest/url=https://localhost:8080/webapp

Note that, since the configKey is not tied to a particular interface name, multiple proxies can be configured with the same properties.

An interface method can be designated as asynchronous by having it return a java.util.concurrent.CompletionStage. For example, in

public interface TestResourceIntf extends Closeable {

   @Path("test")
   @GET
   public String test();
   
   @Path("testasync")
   @GET
   public CompletionStage<String> testAsync();
}

the test() method can be turned into the asynchronous method testAsync() by having it return a CompletionStage<String> instead of a String.

Asynchronous methods are made to be asynchronous by scheduling their execution on a thread distinct from the calling thread. The MicroProfile Client implementation will have a default means of doing that, but RestClientBuilder.executorService(ExecutorService) provides a way of substituting an application specific ExecutorService.

The classes AsyncInvocationInterceptorFactory and AsyncInvocationInterceptor in package org.eclipse.microprofile.rest.client.ext provides a means of communication between the calling thread and the asynchronous thread:

public interface AsyncInvocationInterceptorFactory {

    /**
     * Implementations of this method should return an implementation of the
     * AsyncInvocationInterceptor interface.  The MP Rest Client
     * implementation runtime will invoke this method, and then invoke the
     * prepareContext and applyContext methods of the
     * returned interceptor when performing an asynchronous method invocation.
     * Null return values will be ignored.
     *
     * @return Non-null instance of AsyncInvocationInterceptor
     */
    AsyncInvocationInterceptor newInterceptor();
}

public interface AsyncInvocationInterceptor {

    /**
     * This method will be invoked by the MP Rest Client runtime on the "main"
     * thread (i.e. the thread calling the async Rest Client interface method)
     * prior to returning control to the calling method.
     */
    void prepareContext();

    /**
     * This method will be invoked by the MP Rest Client runtime on the "async"
     * thread (i.e. the thread used to actually invoke the remote service and
     * wait for the response) prior to sending the request.
     */
    void applyContext();

    /**
     * This method will be invoked by the MP Rest Client runtime on the "async"
     * thread (i.e. the thread used to actually invoke the remote service and
     * wait for the response) after all providers on the inbound response flow
     * have been invoked.
     *
     * @since 1.2
     */
     void removeContext();
}

The following sequence of events occurs:

  1. AsyncInvocationInterceptorFactory.newInterceptor() is called on the calling thread to get an instance of the AsyncInvocationInterceptor.

  2. AsyncInvocationInterceptor.prepareContext() is executed on the calling thread to store information to be used by the request execution.

  3. AsyncInvocationInterceptor.applyContext() is executed on the asynchronous thread.

  4. All relevant outbound providers such as interceptors and filters are executed on the asynchronous thread, followed by the request invocation.

  5. All relevant inbound providers are executed on the asynchronous thread, followed by executing AsyncInvocationInterceptor.removeContext()

  6. The asynchronous thread returns.

An AsyncInvocationInterceptorFactory class is enabled by registering it on the client interface with @RegisterProvider.

RESTEasy resources can be accessed in JavaScript using AJAX using a proxy API generated by RESTEasy.

RESTEasy can generate a JavaScript API that uses AJAX calls to invoke JAX-RS operations.


Each JAX-RS resource class will generate a JavaScript object of the same name as the declaring class (or interface), which will contain every JAX-RS method as properties.


Each JavaScript API method takes an optional object as single parameter where each property is a cookie, header, path, query or form parameter as identified by their name, or the following special parameters:

Warning

The following special parameter names are subject to change.

Table 53.1. API parameter properties
Property name Default Description
$entity The entity to send as a PUT, POST request.
$contentType As determined by @Consumes. The MIME type of the body entity sent as the Content-Type header.
$accepts Determined by @Provides, defaults to */*. The accepted MIME types sent as the Accept header.
$callback Set to a function(httpCode, xmlHttpRequest, value) for an asynchronous call. If not present, the call will be synchronous and return the value.
$apiURL Determined by container Set to the base URI of your JAX-RS endpoint, not including the last slash.
$username If username and password are set, they will be used for credentials for the request.
$password If username and password are set, they will be used for credentials for the request.

@Form is a RESTEasy specific annotation that allows you to re-use any @*Param annotation within an injected class. The generated JavaScript API will expand the parameters for use automatically. Support we have the following form:

public class MyForm {

    @FormParam("stuff")
    private String stuff;
    @FormParam("number")
    private int number;
    @HeaderParam("myHeader")
    private String header;
}

And the resource is like:

@Path("/")

public class MyResource {
    @POST
    public String postForm(@Form MyForm myForm) {...}
}

Then we could call the method from JavaScript API like following:

MyResource.postForm({stuff:"A", myHeader:"B", number:1});

Also, @Form supports prefix mappings for lists and maps:

public static class Person {

    @Form(prefix="telephoneNumbers") List<TelephoneNumber> telephoneNumbers;
    @Form(prefix="address") Map<String, Address> addresses;
}
public static class TelephoneNumber {
    @FormParam("countryCode") private String countryCode;
    @FormParam("number") private String number;
}
public static class Address {
    @FormParam("street") private String street;
    @FormParam("houseNumber") private String houseNumber;
}
@Path("person")
public static class MyResource {
    @POST
    public void postForm(@Form Person p) {...} 
}

From JavaScript we could call the API like this:

MyResource.postForm({
	telephoneNumbers:[
		{"telephoneNumbers[0].countryCode":31},
		{"telephoneNumbers[0].number":12345678},
		{"telephoneNumbers[1].countryCode":91},
		{"telephoneNumbers[1].number":9717738723}
	],
	address:[
		{"address[INVOICE].street":"Main Street"},
		{"address[INVOICE].houseNumber":2},
		{"address[SHIPPING].street":"Square One"},
		{"address[SHIPPING].houseNumber":13}
	]
});

The Accept header sent by any client JavaScript function is controlled by the $accepts parameter, which overrides the @Produces annotation on the JAX-RS endpoint. The returned value however is controlled by the Content-Type header sent in the response as follows:

Table 53.2. Return values by MIME type
MIME Description
text/xml,application/xml,application/*+xml The response entity is parsed as XML before being returned. The return value is thus a DOM Document.
application/json The response entity is parsed as JSON before being returned. The return value is thus a JavaScript Object.
Anything else The response entity is returned raw.

The Content-Type header sent in the request is controlled by the $contentType parameter which overrides the @Consumes annotation on the JAX-RS endpoint. The value passed as entity body using the $entity parameter is marshalled according to both its type and content type:

Table 53.3. Controlling sent entities
Type MIME Description
DOM Element Empty or text/xml,application/xml,application/*+xml The DOM Element is marshalled to XML before being sent.
JavaScript Object (JSON) Empty or application/json The JSON object is marshalled to a JSON string before being sent.
Anything else Anything else The entity is sent as is.

The RESTEasy JavaScript API can also be used to manually construct your requests.

The REST.Request class is used to build custom requests. It has the following members:

Table 53.5. The REST.Request class
Member Description
execute(callback) Executes the request with all the information set in the current object. The value is never returned but passed to the optional argument callback.
setAccepts(acceptHeader) Sets the Accept request header. Defaults to */*.
setCredentials(username, password) Sets the request credentials.
setEntity(entity) Sets the request entity.
setContentType(contentTypeHeader) Sets the Content-Type request header.
setURI(uri) Sets the request URI. This should be an absolute URI.
setMethod(method) Sets the request method. Defaults to GET.
setAsync(async) Controls whether the request should be asynchronous. Defaults to true.
addCookie(name, value) Sets the given cookie in the current document when executing the request. Beware that this will be persistent in your browser.
addQueryParameter(name, value) Adds a query parameter to the URI query part.
addMatrixParameter(name, value) Adds a matrix parameter (path parameter) to the last path segment of the request URI.
addHeader(name, value) Adds a request header.

RESTEasy has its own support to generate WADL for its resources, and it supports several different containers. The following text will show you how to use this feature in different containers.

RESTEasy has provided a ResteasyWadlDefaultResource to generate WADL info for its embedded containers. Here is and example to show how to use it with RESTEasy's Sun JDK HTTP Server container:

com.sun.net.httpserver.HttpServer httpServer =
	com.sun.net.httpserver.HttpServer.create(new InetSocketAddress(port), 10);

org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.sun.http.HttpContextBuilder contextBuilder = 
	new org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.sun.http.HttpContextBuilder();

contextBuilder.getDeployment().getActualResourceClasses()
	.add(ResteasyWadlDefaultResource.class);
contextBuilder.bind(httpServer);

ResteasyWadlDefaultResource.getServices()
	.put("/",
		ResteasyWadlGenerator
			.generateServiceRegistry(contextBuilder.getDeployment()));

httpServer.start();

From the above code example, we can see how ResteasyWadlDefaultResource is registered into deployment:

contextBuilder.getDeployment().getActualResourceClasses()
	.add(ResteasyWadlDefaultResource.class);

Another important thing is to use ResteasyWadlGenerator to generate the WADL info for the resources in deployment at last:

ResteasyWadlDefaultResource.getServices()
	.put("/",
		ResteasyWadlGenerator
			.generateServiceRegistry(contextBuilder.getDeployment()));

After the above configuration is set, then users can access "/application.xml" to fetch the WADL info, because ResteasyWadlDefaultResource has @PATH set to "/application.xml" as default:

@Path("/application.xml")
public class ResteasyWadlDefaultResource

The RESTEasy Undertow Container is a embedded Servlet Container, and RESTEasy WADL provides a connector to it. To use RESTEasy Undertow Container together with WADL support, you need to add these three components into your maven dependencies:

<dependency>
	<groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
	<artifactId>resteasy-wadl</artifactId>
	<version>${project.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
	<groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
	<artifactId>resteasy-wadl-undertow-connector</artifactId>
	<version>${project.version}</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
	<groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
	<artifactId>resteasy-undertow</artifactId>
	<version>${project.version}</version>
</dependency>

The resteasy-wadl-undertow-connector provides a WadlUndertowConnector to help you to use WADL in RESTEasy Undertow Container. Here is the code example:

UndertowJaxrsServer server = new UndertowJaxrsServer().start();
WadlUndertowConnector connector = new WadlUndertowConnector();
connector.deployToServer(server, MyApp.class);

The MyApp class shown in above code is a standard JAX-RS 2.0 Application class in your project:

            
@ApplicationPath("/base")
public static class MyApp extends Application {
    @Override
    public Set<Class<?>> getClasses() {
        HashSet<Class<?>> classes = new HashSet<Class<?>>();
        classes.add(YourResource.class);
        return classes;
    }
}

After the Application is deployed to the UndertowJaxrsServer via WadlUndertowConnector, you can access the WADL info at "/application.xml" prefixed by the @ApplicationPath in your Application class. If you want to override the @ApplicationPath, you can use the other method in WadlUndertowConnector:

            
public UndertowJaxrsServer deployToServer(UndertowJaxrsServer server, Class<? extends Application> application, String contextPath)
            
        

The "deployToServer" method shown above accepts a "contextPath" parameter, which you can use to override the @ApplicationPath value in the Application class.

By default, the tracing feature is turned off. If you want to enable the tracing feature, you need to add the following dependency in your project:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
    <artifactId>resteasy-tracing-api</artifactId>
</dependency>

Because the tracing feature is an optional feature, the above dependency is provided by the resteasy-extensions project.

After including the dependency in your project, you can set the tracing mode and tracing level via the context-param parameters in your web project’s web.xml file. Here is the example:

<context-param>
    <param-name>resteasy.server.tracing.type</param-name>
    <param-value>ALL</param-value>
    <param-name>resteasy.server.tracing.threshold</param-name>
    <param-value>SUMMARY</param-value>
</context-param>

Besides the above configuration, we also need to make sure that the underlying JBoss Logger is configured properly so it can output the tracing info as required. Here is an example of the "logging.properties":

# Additional logger names to configure (root logger is always configured)
#loggers=org.foo.bar, org.foo.baz
# Root logger level
logger.level=ALL
# Declare handlers for the root logger
logger.handlers=CONSOLE, FILE
# Declare handlers for additional loggers
#logger.org.foo.bar.handlers=XXX, YYY
# Console handler configuration
handler.CONSOLE=org.jboss.logmanager.handlers.ConsoleHandler
handler.CONSOLE.properties=autoFlush
handler.CONSOLE.level=ALL
handler.CONSOLE.autoFlush=true
handler.CONSOLE.formatter=PATTERN
# File handler configuration
handler.FILE=org.jboss.logmanager.handlers.FileHandler
handler.FILE.level=ALL
handler.FILE.properties=autoFlush,fileName
handler.FILE.autoFlush=true
handler.FILE.fileName=/tmp/jboss.log
handler.FILE.formatter=PATTERN
# The log format pattern for both logs
formatter.PATTERN=org.jboss.logmanager.formatters.PatternFormatter
formatter.PATTERN.properties=pattern
formatter.PATTERN.pattern=%d{HH:mm:ss,SSS} %-5p [%c{1}] %m%n

In above setting, we have set the logger level to "ALL", and output log file to "/tmp/jboss.log". In this case, we can make sure that we get all the tracing info.

After enabling the tracing feature as shown above, we should get the tracing info output like following:

16:21:40,110 INFO  [general] org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.Servlet3AsyncHttpRequest@721299ff START baseUri=[http://localhost:8081/] requestUri=[http://localhost:8081/type] method=[GET] authScheme=[n/a] accept=n/a accept-encoding=n/a accept-charset=n/a accept-language=n/a content-type=n/a content-length=n/a  [ ---- ms]
16:21:40,110 TRACE [general] org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.Servlet3AsyncHttpRequest@721299ff START_HEADERS Other request headers: Connection=[Keep-Alive] Host=[localhost:8081] User-Agent=[Apache-HttpClient/4.5.4 (Java/1.8.0_201)]  [ ---- ms]
16:21:40,114 INFO  [general] org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.Servlet3AsyncHttpRequest@721299ff PRE_MATCH_SUMMARY PreMatchRequest summary: 0 filters [ 0.04 ms]
16:21:40,118 DEBUG [general] org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.Servlet3AsyncHttpRequest@721299ff REQUEST_FILTER Filter by [io.weli.tracing.HttpMethodOverride @60353244] [ 0.02 ms]
...
16:21:40,164 INFO  [general] org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.Servlet3AsyncHttpRequest@721299ff RESPONSE_FILTER_SUMMARY Response summary: 1 filters [ 8.11 ms]
16:21:40,164 INFO  [general] org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.Servlet3AsyncHttpRequest@721299ff FINISHED Response status: 200 [ ---- ms]

From the above tracing log output shown above, we can see that the entry of tracing log contains several parts:

  • Level Of The Log Entry

    We can see the log entries have different log levels, such as "TRACE", "INFO", "DEBUG". The tracing feature maps its own tracing info levels to the JBoss Logger output levels like this.

  • The Request Scope Id

    We can see the request id like:

    org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.Servlet3AsyncHttpRequest@721299ff

    So we can know which request the log entry belongs to.

  • The Type Of The Tracing Log

    tracing log entries are divided into multiple categories, such as "START_HEADERS", "REQUEST_FILTER", "FINISHED", etc.

  • The Detail Of The Log Entry

    The last part of a log entry is the detail message of this entry.

In next section let's see how do we fetch the tracing info from client side.

The tracing log can be returned to client side in JSON format. To use this feature, we need to choose a JSON provider for tracing module to generate JSON formatted info. There are two JSON providers you can choose from and they both support the JSON data marshalling. The first choice is to use the jackson2 provider:

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

The second choice is to use the json-binding provider:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
    <artifactId>resteasy-json-binding-provider</artifactId>
</dependency>

After including either of the above module, we can send request to server to get the JSON formatted tracing info. Here is a request example(the example is provided at last section of this chapter):

$ curl -H "X-RESTEasy-Tracing-Accept-Format: JSON" -i http://localhost:8081/type

In the above curl command, we have added "X-RESTEasy-Tracing-Accept-Format: JSON" into request header, in this way we are requesting the json formatted tracing info from server, and the tracing info in response header is like the following:

X-RESTEasy-Tracing-000: [{"event":"START","duration":0,"timestamp":195286694509932,"text":"baseUri=[http://localhost:8081/] requestUri=[http://localhost:8081/type] method=[GET] authScheme=[n/a] accept=*/* accept-encoding=n/a accept-charset=n/a accept-language=n/a content-type=n/a content-length=n/a ","requestId":"org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.Servlet3AsyncHttpRequest@7f8a33b9"},{"event":"START_HEADERS","duration":0,"timestamp":195286695053606,"text":"Other request headers: Accept=[*/*] Host=[localhost:8081] User-Agent=[curl/7.54.0] X-RESTEasy-Tracing-Accept-Format=[JSON] ","requestId":"org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.Servlet3AsyncHttpRequest@7f8a33b9"}...{"event":"FINISHED","duration":0,"timestamp":195286729758836,"text":"Response status: 200","requestId":"org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.Servlet3AsyncHttpRequest@7f8a33b9"}]

The above text is the raw output from response, and we can format it to make it readable:

[{
    "X-RESTEasy-Tracing-000": [
        {
            "event": "START",
            "duration": 0,
            "timestamp": 195286694509932,
            "text": "baseUri=[http://localhost:8081/] requestUri=[http://localhost:8081/type] method=[GET] authScheme=[n/a] accept=*/* accept-encoding=n/a accept-charset=n/a accept-language=n/a content-type=n/a content-length=n/a ",
            "requestId": "org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.Servlet3AsyncHttpRequest@7f8a33b9"
        },
        {
            "event": "START_HEADERS",
            "duration": 0,
            "timestamp": 195286695053606,
            "text": "Other request headers: Accept=[*/*] Host=[localhost:8081] User-Agent=[curl/7.54.0] X-RESTEasy-Tracing-Accept-Format=[JSON] ",
            "requestId": "org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.Servlet3AsyncHttpRequest@7f8a33b9"
        },
        {
            "event": "PRE_MATCH_SUMMARY",
            "duration": 14563,
            "timestamp": 195286697637157,
            "text": "PreMatchRequest summary: 0 filters",
            "requestId": "org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.Servlet3AsyncHttpRequest@7f8a33b9"
        },
 ...
        {
            "event": "FINISHED",
            "duration": 0,
            "timestamp": 195286729758836,
            "text": "Response status: 200",
            "requestId": "org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.server.servlet.Servlet3AsyncHttpRequest@7f8a33b9"
        }
    ]
}]

From above we can see the tracing info is returned as JSON text.

The tracing events are defined in RESTEasyServerTracingEvent. Here is a complete list of the tracing events and its descriptions:

  • DISPATCH_RESPONSE

    Resource method invocation results to JAX-RS Response.

  • EXCEPTION_MAPPING

    ExceptionMapper invoked.

  • FINISHED

    Request processing finished.

  • MATCH_LOCATOR

    Matched sub-resource locator method.

  • MATCH_PATH_FIND

    Matching path pattern.

  • MATCH_PATH_NOT_MATCHED

    Path pattern not matched.

  • MATCH_PATH_SELECTED

    Path pattern matched/selected.

  • MATCH_PATH_SKIPPED

    Path pattern skipped as higher-priority pattern has been selected already.

  • MATCH_RESOURCE

    Matched resource instance.

  • MATCH_RESOURCE_METHOD

    Matched resource method.

  • MATCH_RUNTIME_RESOURCE

    Matched runtime resource.

  • MATCH_SUMMARY

    Matching summary.

  • METHOD_INVOKE

    Resource method invoked.

  • PRE_MATCH

    RESTEasy HttpRequestPreprocessor invoked.

  • PRE_MATCH_SUMMARY

    RESTEasy HttpRequestPreprocessor invoked.

  • REQUEST_FILTER

    ContainerRequestFilter invoked.

  • REQUEST_FILTER_SUMMARY

    ContainerRequestFilter invocation summary.

  • RESPONSE_FILTER

    ContainerResponseFilter invoked.

  • RESPONSE_FILTER_SUMMARY

    ContainerResponseFilter invocation summary.

  • START

    Request processing started.

  • START_HEADERS

    All HTTP request headers.

In the "resteasy-example" project, it contains a RESTEasy Tracing Example to show the usages of tracing features. Please check the example to see the usages in action.

RESTEasy provides the support for validation mandated by the JAX-RS: Java API for RESTful Web Services 2.1 , given the presence of an implementation of the Bean Validation specification such as Hibernate Validator.

Validation provides a declarative way of imposing constraints on fields and properties of beans, bean classes, and the parameters and return values of bean methods. For example, in

@Path("all")
@TestClassConstraint(5)
public class TestResource
{
   @Size(min=2, max=4)
   @PathParam("s")
   String s;

   private String t;

   @Size(min=3)  
   public String getT()
   {
      return t;
   }

   @PathParam("t") 
   public void setT(String t)
   {
      this.t = t;
   }

   @POST
   @Path("{s}/{t}/{u}")
   @Pattern(regexp="[a-c]+")
   public String post(@PathParam("u") String u)
   {
      return u;
   }
}

the field s is constrained by the Bean Validation built-in annotation @Size to have between 2 and 4 characters, the property t is constrained to have at least 3 characters, and the TestResource object is constrained by the application defined annotation @TestClassConstraint to have the combined lengths of s and t less than 5:

@Constraint(validatedBy = TestClassValidator.class)
@Target({TYPE})
@Retention(RUNTIME)
public @interface TestClassConstraint
{
   String message() default "Concatenation of s and t must have length > {value}";
   Class<?>[] groups() default {};
   Class<? extends Payload>[] payload() default {};
   int value();
}

public class TestClassValidator implements ConstraintValidator<TestClassConstraint, TestResource>
{
   int length;

   public void initialize(TestClassConstraint constraintAnnotation)
   {
      length = constraintAnnotation.value();
   }

   public boolean isValid(TestResource value, ConstraintValidatorContext context)
   {
      boolean b = value.retrieveS().length() + value.getT().length() < length;
   }
}

See the links above for more about how to create validation annotations.

Also, the method parameter u is constrained to have no more than 5 characters, and the return value of method post is constrained by the built-in annotation @Pattern to match the regular expression "[a-c]+".

The sequence of validation constraint testing is as follows:

  1. Create the resource and validate property, and class constraints.
  2. Validate the resource method parameters.
  3. If no violations have been detected, call the resource method and validate the return value

Note. Though fields and properties are technically different, they are subject to the same kinds of constraints, so they are treated the same in the context of validation. Together, they will both be referred to as "properties" herein.

If a validation problem occurs, either a problem with the validation definitions or a constraint violation, RESTEasy will set the return header org.jboss.resteasy.api.validation.Validation.VALIDATION_HEADER ("validation-exception") to "true".

If RESTEasy detects a structural validation problem, such as a validation annotation with a missing validator class, it will return a String representation of a javax.validation.ValidationException. For example

javax.validation.ValidationException: HV000028: Unexpected exception during isValid call.[org.jboss.resteasy.test.validation.TestValidationExceptions$OtherValidationException]

If any constraint violations are detected, RESTEasy will return a report in one of a variety of formats. If one of "application/xml" or "application/json" occur in the "Accept" request header, RESTEasy will return an appropriately marshalled instance of org.jboss.resteasy.api.validation.ViolationReport:

@XmlRootElement(name="violationReport")
@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)
public class ViolationReport
{
   ...

   public ArrayList<ResteasyConstraintViolation> getPropertyViolations()
   {
      return propertyViolations;
   }

   public ArrayList<ResteasyConstraintViolation> getClassViolations()
   {
      return classViolations;
   }

   public ArrayList<ResteasyConstraintViolation> getParameterViolations()
   {
      return parameterViolations;
   }

   public ArrayList<ResteasyConstraintViolation> getReturnValueViolations()
   {
      return returnValueViolations;
   }

   ...
}

where org.jboss.resteasy.api.validation.ResteasyConstraintViolation is defined:

@XmlRootElement(name="resteasyConstraintViolation")
@XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)
public class ResteasyConstraintViolation implements Serializable
{
   ...
   
   /**
    * @return type of constraint
    */
   public ConstraintType.Type getConstraintType()
   {
      return constraintType;
   }
   
   /**
    * @return description of element violating constraint
    */
   public String getPath()
   {
      return path;
   }
   
   /**
    * @return description of constraint violation
    */
   public String getMessage()
   {
      return message;
   }
   
   /**
    * @return object in violation of constraint
    */
   public String getValue()
   {
      return value;
   }
   
   /**
    * @return String representation of violation
    */
   public String toString()
   {
      return "[" + type() + "]\r[" + path + "]\r[" + message + "]\r[" + value + "]\r";
   }
   
   /**
    * @return String form of violation type 
    */
   public String type()
   {
      return constraintType.toString();
   }
}

and org.jboss.resteasy.api.validation.ConstraintType is the enumeration

public class ConstraintType
{
   public enum Type {CLASS, PROPERTY, PARAMETER, RETURN_VALUE};
}

If both "application/xml" or "application/json" occur in the "Accept" request header, the media type is chosen according to the ranking given by implicit or explicit "q" parameter values. In the case of a tie, the returned media type is indeterminate.

If neither "application/xml" or "application/json" occur in the "Accept" request header, RESTEasy returns a report with a String representation of each ResteasyConstraintViolation, where each field is delimited by '[' and ']', followed by a '\r', with a final '\r' at the end. For example,

[PROPERTY]
[s]
[size must be between 2 and 4]
[a]

[PROPERTY]
[t]
[size must be between 3 and 5]
[z]

[CLASS]
[]
[Concatenation of s and t must have length > 5]
[org.jboss.resteasy.validation.TestResource@68467a6f]

[PARAMETER]
[test.<cross-parameter>]
[Parameters must total <= 7]
[[5, 7]]

[RETURN_VALUE]
[g.<return value>]
[size must be between 2 and 4]
[abcde]

where the four fields are

  1. type of constraint
  2. path to violating element (e.g., property name, class name, method name and parameter name)
  3. message
  4. violating element

The ViolationReport can be reconsititued from the String as follows:

Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
Invocation.Builder request = client.target(...).request();
Response response = request.get();
if (Boolean.valueOf(response.getHeaders().getFirst(Validation.VALIDATION_HEADER)))
{
   String s = response.readEntity(String.class);
   ViolationReport report = new ViolationReport(s);
}

If the path field is considered to be too much server side information, it can be surpressed by setting the parameter "resteasy.validation.suppress.path" to "true". In that case, "*" will be returned in the path fields. [See Section 3.4, “Configuration” for more information about application configuration.]

The form of validation mandated by the JAX-RS 2.1 specification, based on Bean Validation 1.1 or greater, is supported by the RESTEasy module resteasy-validator-provider, which produces the artifact resteasy-validator-provider-<version>.jar. Validation is turned on by default (assuming resteasy-validator-provider-<version>.jar is available), though parameter and return value validation can be turned off or modified in the validation.xml configuration file. See the Hibernate Validator documentation for the details.

RESTEasy obtains a bean validation implementation by looking in the available META-INF/services/javax.ws.rs.Providers files for an implementation of ContextResolver<GeneralValidator>, where org.jboss.resteasy.spi.GeneralValidator is

public interface GeneralValidator
{
   /**
    * Validates all constraints on {@code object}.
    *
    * @param object object to validate
    * @param groups the group or list of groups targeted for validation (defaults to
    *        {@link Default})
    * @return constraint violations or an empty set if none
    * @throws IllegalArgumentException if object is {@code null}
    *         or if {@code null} is passed to the varargs groups
    * @throws ValidationException if a non recoverable error happens
    *         during the validation process
    */
   public abstract void validate(HttpRequest request, Object object, Class<?>... groups);
   /**
    * Validates all constraints placed on the parameters of the given method.
    *
    * @param <T> the type hosting the method to validate
    * @param object the object on which the method to validate is invoked
    * @param method the method for which the parameter constraints is validated
    * @param parameterValues the values provided by the caller for the given method's
    *        parameters
    * @param groups the group or list of groups targeted for validation (defaults to
    *        {@link Default})
    * @return a set with the constraint violations caused by this validation;
    *         will be empty if no error occurs, but never {@code null}
    * @throws IllegalArgumentException if {@code null} is passed for any of the parameters
    *         or if parameters don't match with each other
    * @throws ValidationException if a non recoverable error happens during the
    *         validation process
    */
   public abstract void validateAllParameters(HttpRequest request, Object object, Method method, Object[] parameterValues, Class<?>... groups);

   /**
    * Validates all return value constraints of the given method.
    *
    * @param <T> the type hosting the method to validate
    * @param object the object on which the method to validate is invoked
    * @param method the method for which the return value constraints is validated
    * @param returnValue the value returned by the given method
    * @param groups the group or list of groups targeted for validation (defaults to
    *        {@link Default})
    * @return a set with the constraint violations caused by this validation;
    *         will be empty if no error occurs, but never {@code null}
    * @throws IllegalArgumentException if {@code null} is passed for any of the object,
    *         method or groups parameters or if parameters don't match with each other
    * @throws ValidationException if a non recoverable error happens during the
    *         validation process
    */
   public abstract void validateReturnValue(
         HttpRequest request, Object object, Method method, Object returnValue, Class<?>... groups);

   /**
    * Indicates if validation is turned on for a class.
    * 
    * @param clazz Class to be examined
    * @return true if and only if validation is turned on for clazz
    */
   public abstract boolean isValidatable(Class<?> clazz);
     
   /**
    * Indicates if validation is turned on for a method.
    * 
    * @param method method to be examined
    * @return true if and only if validation is turned on for method
    */   
   public abstract boolean isMethodValidatable(Method method);

   void checkViolations(HttpRequest request);
}

The methods and the javadoc are adapted from the Bean Validation 1.1 classes javax.validation.Validator and javax.validation.executable.ExecutableValidator.

RESTEasy module resteasy-validator-provider supplies an implementation of GeneralValidator. An alternative implementation may be supplied by implementing ContextResolver<GeneralValidator> and org.jboss.resteasy.spi.validation.GeneralValidator.

A validator intended to function in the presence of CDI must also implement the subinterface

public interface GeneralValidatorCDI extends GeneralValidator
{
   /**
    * Indicates if validation is turned on for a class.
    * 
    * This method should be called from the resteasy-jaxrs module. It should
    * test if injectorFactor is an instance of CdiInjectorFactory, which indicates
    * that CDI is active.  If so, it should return false. Otherwise, it should
    * return the same value returned by GeneralValidator.isValidatable().
    * 
    * @param clazz Class to be examined
    * @param injectorFactory the InjectorFactory used for clazz
    * @return true if and only if validation is turned on for clazz
    */
   public boolean isValidatable(Class<?> clazz, InjectorFactory injectorFactory);
   
   /**
    * Indicates if validation is turned on for a class.
    * This method should be called only from the resteasy-cdi module.
    * 
    * @param clazz Class to be examined
    * @return true if and only if validation is turned on for clazz
    */
   public abstract boolean isValidatableFromCDI(Class<?> clazz);
  
   /**
    * Throws a ResteasyViolationException if any validation violations have been detected.
    * The method should be called only from the resteasy-cdi module.
    * @param request
    */
   public void checkViolationsfromCDI(HttpRequest request);
   
   /**
    * Throws a ResteasyViolationException if either a ConstraintViolationException or a
    * ResteasyConstraintViolationException is embedded in the cause hierarchy of e.
    * 
    * @param request
    * @param e
    */
   public void checkForConstraintViolations(HttpRequest request, Exception e);
}
   

The validator in resteasy-validator-provider implements GeneralValidatorCDI.

With the help of the JBoss Logging project, all log and exception messages in RESTEasy are internationalized. That is, they have a default value in English which can be overridden in any given locale by a file which gives translated values. For more information about internationalization and localization in Java, see, for example, http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/i18n. For more about JBoss Logging, see https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/JBoss_Enterprise_Application_Platform/6/html/Development_Guide/, Chapters 4 and 5.

Each module in RESTEasy that produces any text in the form of logging messages or exception messages has an interface named org.jboss.resteasy...i18n.Messages which contains the default messages. Those modules which do any logging also have an interface named org.jboss.resteasy...i18n.LogMessages which gives access to an underlying logger. With the exception of the resteasy-jaxrs module, all messages are in the Messages class. resteasy-jaxrs has exception messages in the Messages class and log messages in the LogMessages class.

Each message is prefixed by the project code "RESTEASY" followed by an ID which is unique to RESTEasy. These IDs belong to the following ranges:


For example, the jaxb provider contains the interface

org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.jaxb.i18.Messages

which looks like

@MessageBundle(projectCode = "RESTEASY")
public interface Messages
{
   Messages MESSAGES = org.jboss.logging.Messages.getBundle(Messages.class);
   int BASE = 6500;

   @Message(id = BASE + 00, value = "Collection wrapping failed, expected root element name of {0} got {1}", format=Format.MESSAGE_FORMAT)
   String collectionWrappingFailedLocalPart(String element, String localPart);

   @Message(id = BASE + 05, value = "Collection wrapping failed, expect namespace of {0} got {1}", format=Format.MESSAGE_FORMAT)
   String collectionWrappingFailedNamespace(String namespace, String uri);
   ...
   

The value of a message is retrieved by referencing a method and passing the appropriate parameters. For example,

throw new JAXBUnmarshalException(Messages.MESSAGES.collectionWrappingFailedLocalPart(wrapped.element(), ele.getName().getLocalPart()));
   

When RESTEasy is built with the "i18n" profile, a template properties file containing the default messages is created in a subdirectory of target/generated-translation-files. In the jaxb provider, for example, the

Messages.i18n_locale_COUNTRY_VARIANT.properties

goes in the

org/jboss/resteasy/plugins/providers/jaxb/i18n

directory, and the first few lines are

# Id: 6500
# Message: Collection wrapping failed, expected root element name of {0} got {1}
# @param 1: element -
# @param 2: localPart -
collectionWrappingFailedLocalPart=Collection wrapping failed, expected root element name of {0} got {1}
# Id: 6505
# Message: Collection wrapping failed, expect namespace of {0} got {1}
# @param 1: namespace -
# @param 2: uri -
collectionWrappingFailedNamespace=Collection wrapping failed, expect namespace of {0} got {1}
   

To provide the translation of the messages for a particular locale, the file should be renamed, replacing "locale", "COUNTRY", and "VARIANT" as appropriate (possibly omitting the latter two), and copied to the src/main/resources directory. In the jaxb provider, it would go in

src/main/resources/org/jboss/resteasy/plugins/providers/jaxb/i18n

For testing purposes, each module containing a Messages interface has two sample properties files, for the locale "en" and the imaginary locale "xx", in the src/test/resources directory. They are copied to src/main/resources when the module is built and deleted when it is cleaned.

The Messages.i18n_xx.properties file in the jaxb provider, for example, looks like

# Id: 6500
# Message: Collection wrapping failed, expected root element name of {0} got {1}
# @param 1: element -
# @param 2: localPart -
collectionWrappingFailedLocalPart=Collection wrapping failed, expected root element name of {0} got {1}
# Id: 6505
# Message: Collection wrapping failed, expect namespace of {0} got {1}
# @param 1: namespace -
# @param 2: uri -
collectionWrappingFailedNamespace=aaa {0} bbb {1} ccc
...
   

Note that the value of collectionWrappingFailedNamespace is modified.

JBoss's Maven Repository is at: http://repository.jboss.org/nexus/content/groups/public/

RESTEasy is modularized into 20 plus components. Each component is accessible as a Maven artifact. As a convenience RESTEasy provides a BOM containing the complete set of components with the appropriate versions for the "stack".

It is recommended to declare the BOM in your POM file, that way you will always be sure to get the correct version of the artifacts. In addition, you will not need to declare the version of each RESTEasy artifact called out in the dependencies section.

Declare the BOM file in the dependencyManagement section of the POM file like this. Note that Maven version 2.0.9 or higher is required to process BOM files.

    
    <dependencyManagement>
      <dependencies>
        <dependency>
          <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
          <artifactId>resteasy-bom</artifactId>
          <version>${version.resteasy}</version>
          <type>pom</type>
          <scope>import</scope>
        </dependency>
      </dependencies>
    </dependencyManagement>
  
  

Declare the specific RESTEasy artifacts you require in the dependencies section of the POM file like this.

    
     <dependencies>
       <dependency>
          <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
          <artifactId>resteasy-client</artifactId>
       </dependency>
        ....
   </dependencies>
  
  

It is possible to reference a RESTEasy artifact version not in the current BOM by specifying a version in the dependency itself.

    
     <dependencies>
       <dependency>
          <groupId>org.jboss.resteasy</groupId>
          <artifactId>resteasy-client</artifactId>
          <version>${version.some.other}<version>
       </dependency>
        ....
   </dependencies>
  
  

RESTEasy 3.1.0.Final release comes with many changes compared to previous 3.0 point releases. User discernible changes in RESTEasy 3.1.0.Final include

  • module reorganization
  • package reorganization
  • new features
  • minor behavioral changes
  • miscellaneous changes

In this chapter we focus on changes that might cause existing code to fail or behave in new ways. The audience for this discussion may be partitioned into three subsets, depending on the version of RESTEasy currently in use, the API currently in use, and the API to be used after an upgrade to RESTEasy 3.1. The following APIs are available:

  1. RESTEasy 2: RESTEasy 2 conforms to the JAX-RS 1 specification, and adds a variety of additional facilities, such as a client API, a caching system, an interceptor framework, etc. All of these user facing classes and interfaces comprise the RESTEasy 2 API.

  2. RESTEasy 3: RESTEasy 3 conforms to the JAX-RS 2 specification, and adds some additional facilities. Many of the non-spec facilities from the RESTEasy 2 API are formalized, in altered form, in JAX-RS 2, in which case the older facilites are deprecated. The non-deprecated user facing classes and interfaces in RESTEasy 3 comprise the RESTEasy 3 API.

These definitions are rather informal and imprecise, since the user facing classes / interfaces in Resteasy 3.0.19.Final, for example, are a proper superset of the user facing classes / interfaces in RESTEasy 3.0.1.Final. For this discussion, we identify the API with the version currently in use in a given project.

Now, there are three potential target audiences of users planning to upgrade to RESTEasy 3.1.0.Final:

  1. Those currently using RESTEasy API 3 with some RESTEasy 3.0.x release

  2. Those currently using RESTEasy API 2 with some RESTEasy 2.x or 3.0.x release and planning to upgrade to RESTEasy API 3

  3. Those currently using RESTEasy API 2 with some RESTEasy 2.x or 3.0.x release and planning to continue to use RESTEasy API 2

Of these, users in Group 2 have the most work to do in upgrading from RESTEasy API 2 to RESTEasy API 3. They should consult the separate guide Upgrading from RESTEasy 2 to RESTEasy 3.

Ideally, users in Groups 1 and 3 might make some changes to take advantage of new features but would have no changes forced on them by reorganization or altered behavior. Indeed, that is almost the case, but there are a few changes that they should be aware of.

All RESTEasy changes are documented in JIRA issues. Issues that describe detectable changes in release 3.1.0.Final that might impact existing applications include

  • RESTEASY-1341: Build method of org.jboss.resteasy.client.jaxrs.internal.ClientInvocationBuilder always return the same instance.

    When a build() method from

    • org.jboss.resteasy.client.jaxrs.internal.ClientInvocationBuilder in resteasy-client,
    • org.jboss.resteasy.specimpl.LinkBuilderImpl in resteasy-jaxrs,
    • org.jboss.resteasy.specimpl.ResteasyUriBuilder in resteasy-jaxrs

    is called, it will return a new object. This behavior might be seen indirectly. For example,

    Builder builder = client.target(generateURL(path)).request();
    ...
    Link link = new LinkBuilderImpl().uri(href).build();
    ...
    URI uri = uriInfo.getBaseUriBuilder().path("test").build();
          
  • RESTEASY-1433: Compile with JDK 1.8 source/target version

    As it says. Depending on the application, it might be necessary to recompile with a target of JDK 1.8 so that calls to RESTEasy code can work.

  • RESTEASY-1484: CVE-2016-6346: Abuse of GZIPInterceptor in can lead to denial of service attack

    Prior to release 3.1.0.Final, the default behavior of RESTEasy was to use GZIP to compress and decompress messages whenever "gzip" appeared in the Content-Encoding header. However, decompressing messages can lead to security issues, so, as of release 3.1.0.Final, GZIP compression has to be enabled explicitly. For details, see Chapter GZIP Compression/Decompression.

    Note. Because of some package reorganization due to RESTEASY-1531 (see below), the GZIP interceptors, which used to be in package org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.interceptors.encoding are now in org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.interceptors.

  • RESTEASY-1531: Restore removed RESTEasy internal classes into a deprecated/disabled module

    This issue is related to refactoring deprecated elements of the RESTEasy 2 API into a separate module, and, ideally, would have no bearing at all on RESTEasy 3. However, a reorganization of packages has led to moving some non-deprecated API elements in the resteasy-jaxrs module:

    • org.jboss.resteasy.client.ClientURI is now
                org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.ClientURI

    • org.jboss.resteasy.core.interception.JaxrsInterceptorRegistryListener is now
      org.jboss.resteasy.core.interception.jaxrs.JaxrsInterceptorRegistryListener

    • org.jboss.resteasy.spi.interception.DecoratorProcessor is now
      org.jboss.resteasy.spi.DecoratorProcessor

    • All of the dynamic features and interceptors in the package
      org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.interceptors.encoding are now in
      org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.interceptors

User migrating from RESTEasy 3.0 and 3.5+ series should be aware of the changes mentioned in the Section 59.2, “Migration to RESTEasy 3.1 series”. In addition to that, the aspects from the following sections are to be considered.

The resteasy-jaxrs and resteasy-client modules in RESTEasy 3 contain most of the framework classes and there's no real demarcation between what is internal implementation detail and what is for public consumption. In WildFly, the artifact archives from those modules are also included in a public module. Given the common expectation of full backward compatibility of whatever comes from public modules, to allow for easier project evolution and maintenance, in RESTEasy 4.0.0.Final those big components have been split as follows:

As a consequence of the split, all modules except resteasy-core-spi and resteasy-client-api are effectively private / internal. User applications and integration code should not directly rely on classes from those modules, which can be changed without going through any formal deprecation process.

Unfortunately, the refactoring that led to this implied some unavoidable class moves and changes breaking backward compatibility. A detailed list of the potentially problematic changes is available on the refactoring PR.

With the ClientHttpEngine based on Apache HTTP Client 4.0 having gone (it was previously deprecated) and the engine based on version 4.3 of the same library being the default, the user might want to double check the notes about connection close in Section 51.3.4, “Apache HTTP Client 4.3 APIs”.

The conversion of String ojects to MediaType objects is quite common in RESTEasy; for performances reasons a cache has been added to store the results of that conversion; by default the cache keeps the result of 200 conversions, but the number can be configured by setting the org.jboss.resteasy.max_mediatype_cache_size system property.

  • In releases 3.x, when bean validation (Chapter 56, Validation) threw instances of exceptions

    • javax.validation.ConstraintDefinitionException,
    • javax.validation.ConstraintDeclarationException, or
    • javax.validation.GroupDefinitionException,

    they were wrapped in a org.jboss.resteasy.api.validation.Resteasy.ResteasyViolationException, which org.jboss.resteasy.api.validation.ResteasyViolationExceptionMapper, the built-in implementation of javax.ws.rs.ext.ExceptionMapper<javax.validation.ValidationException>, then turned into descriptive text. As of release 4.0.0, instances of ConstraintDefinitionException, etc., are thrown as is. They are still caught by ResteasyViolationExceptionMapper, so, in general, there is no detectable change. It should be noted, however, that an implementation of ExceptionMapper<ResteasyViolationException>, which, prior to release 4.0.0, would have caught wrapped instances of ConstraintDefinitionException, will not catch unwrapped instances.

  • The ResteasyProviderFactory is now an abstract class and is meant to be created using its getInstance() and newInstance() methods. Moreover, on client side, the resolution of the current instance is cached for each thread local context classloader.
  • The ResteasyClient and ResteasyClientBuilder are now abstract classes (from resteasy-client-api) and are not meant for user direct instantiation; plain JAX-RS API usage is expected instead:
    //ResteasyClient client = new ResteasyClientBuilder().build(); NO!
    //if plan JAX-RS is enough ...
    Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
    ...
    //if RESTEasy API is needed ...
    ResteasyClient client = (ResteasyClient)ClientBuilder.newClient();
    
    
    //ResteasyClientBuilder builder = new ResteasyClientBuilder(); NO!
    //if plan JAX-RS is enough ...
    ClientBuilder builder = ClientBuilder.newBuilder();
    ...
    //if RESTEasy API is needed ...
    ResteayClientBuilder builder = (ResteasyClientBuilder)ClientBuilder.newBuilder();
                  
  • The package org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.stats (which contains a resource and some related classes) has been moved out of the resteasy-jaxb-provider module into a new resteasy-stats module.

There are a number of great books that you can learn REST and JAX-RS from