Marshall/Unmarshall a JSON to a Java class using JAXB

Question

I am successfully marshaling a POJO into JSON using JAX-RS and JAXB annotations.

The problem is that when I am trying to use the same for un-marshalling my request it doesn’t work. As far as I can see in the documentation JAX-RS can automatically marshal and unmarshal application/json strings back to java classes.

Do I need to create my own MessageBodyReader for that, or this is supported by the framework without using Jackson libraries?

Answer 1

I've been working with Apache Wink and for that I have needed to use a JSON provider, such as Jettison (a colleague has been using Jackson). I wrote up the steps I took here

My guess is that you too will need to to use a JSON provider. Is there a reason not to use a Jackson provider?

Answer 2

I have been doing it successfully in RESTEasy. I have it set up to consume and produce both XML and JSON. Here is a request handler:

@POST
@Produces(["application/json","application/xml"])
@Consumes(["application/json","application/xml"])
@Path("/create")
public Response postCreate(
         ReqData reqData) {
   log.debug("data.name is "+ data.getName());
   ...
   return Response.status(Response.Status.CREATED)
     .entity(whatever)
     .location(whateverURI)
     .build();

}

ReqData is a JavaBean, i.e. it has a default constructor and it has setters and getters that the marshaller finds. I don't have any special JSON tags in ReqData, but I do have @XmlRootElement(name="data") at the top for the XML marshaller and @XmlElement tags on the setters.

I use separate beans for input and output, but as far as I know you can use the same bean.

The client program sends the JSON string in the entity-body of the request, and sets the Context-Type and Accept headers both to "application/json".