[java] no suitable HttpMessageConverter found for response type

Using spring, with this code :

List<HttpMessageConverter<?>> messageConverters = restTemplate.getMessageConverters();
for(HttpMessageConverter httpMessageConverter : messageConverters){
  System.out.println(httpMessageConverter);
}
ResponseEntity<ProductList> productList = restTemplate.getForEntity(productDataUrl,ProductList.class);

I get

org.springframework.http.converter.ByteArrayHttpMessageConverter@34649ee4
org.springframework.http.converter.StringHttpMessageConverter@39fba59b
org.springframework.http.converter.ResourceHttpMessageConverter@383580da
org.springframework.http.converter.xml.SourceHttpMessageConverter@409e850a
org.springframework.http.converter.support.AllEncompassingFormHttpMessageConverter@673074aa
org.springframework.http.converter.xml.Jaxb2RootElementHttpMessageConverter@1e3b79d3
org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter@52bb1b26

org.springframework.web.client.RestClientException: Could not extract response: no suitable HttpMessageConverter found for response type [class com.mycopmany.ProductList] and content type [text/html;charset=UTF-8]

The a snippet of the pojo :

@XmlRootElement(name="TheProductList")
public class ProductList {

@XmlElement(required = true, name = "date")
private LocalDate importDate;

This is not answering the problem but if anyone comes to this question when they stumble upon this exception of no suitable message converter found, here is my problem and solution.

In Spring 4.0.9, we were able to send this

    JSONObject jsonCredential = new JSONObject();
    jsonCredential.put(APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS, data);

    HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
    headers.setContentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON);

ResponseEntity<String> res = restTemplate.exchange(myRestUrl), HttpMethod.POST,request, String.class);

In Spring 4.3.5 release, we starting seeing errors with the message that converter was not found.

The way Convertors work is that if you have it in your classpath, they get registered.

Jackson-asl was still in classpath but was not being recognized by spring. We replaced Jackson-asl with faster-xml jackson core.

Once we added I could see the converter being registered.

In addition to all the answers, if you happen to receive in response text/html while you've expected something else (i.e. application/json), it may suggest that an error occurred on the server side (say 404) and the error page was returned instead of your data.

So it happened in my case. Hope it will save somebody's time.

You could also simply tell your RestTemplate to accept all media types:

@Bean
public RestTemplate restTemplate() {
   final RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate();

   List<HttpMessageConverter<?>> messageConverters = new ArrayList<>();
   MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter converter = new MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter();
   converter.setSupportedMediaTypes(Collections.singletonList(MediaType.ALL));
   messageConverters.add(converter);
   restTemplate.setMessageConverters(messageConverters);

   return restTemplate;
}

A refinement of Vadim Zin4uk's answer is just to use the existing GsonHttpMessageConverter class but invoke the setSupportedMediaTypes() setter.

For spring boot apps, this results into adding to following to your configuration classes:

@Bean
public GsonHttpMessageConverter gsonHttpMessageConverter(Gson gson) {
    GsonHttpMessageConverter converter = new GsonHttpMessageConverter();
    converter.setGson(gson);
    List<MediaType> supportedMediaTypes = converter.getSupportedMediaTypes();
    if (! supportedMediaTypes.contains(TEXT_PLAIN)) {
        supportedMediaTypes = new ArrayList<>(supportedMediaTypes);
        supportedMediaTypes.add(TEXT_PLAIN);
        converter.setSupportedMediaTypes(supportedMediaTypes);
    }
    return converter;
}

If you can't change server media-type response, you can extend GsonHttpMessageConverter to process additional support types

public class MyGsonHttpMessageConverter extends GsonHttpMessageConverter {
    public MyGsonHttpMessageConverter() {
        List<MediaType> types = Arrays.asList(
                new MediaType("text", "html", DEFAULT_CHARSET),
                new MediaType("application", "json", DEFAULT_CHARSET),
                new MediaType("application", "*+json", DEFAULT_CHARSET)
        );
        super.setSupportedMediaTypes(types);
    }
}

If you are using Spring Boot, you might want to make sure you have the Jackson dependency in your classpath. You can do this manually via:

    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
        <artifactId>jackson-annotations</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
        <artifactId>jackson-core</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
        <artifactId>jackson-databind</artifactId>
    </dependency>

Or you can use the web starter:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
</dependency>

You can make up a class, RestTemplateXML, which extends RestTemplate. Then override doExecute(URI, HttpMethod, RequestCallback, ResponseExtractor<T>), and explicitly get response-headers and set content-type to application/xml.

Now Spring reads the headers and knows that it is `application/xml'. It is kind of a hack but it works.

public class RestTemplateXML extends RestTemplate {

  @Override
  protected <T> T doExecute(URI url, HttpMethod method, RequestCallback requestCallback,
        ResponseExtractor<T> responseExtractor) throws RestClientException {

     logger.info( RestTemplateXML.class.getSuperclass().getSimpleName() + ".doExecute() is overridden");

     Assert.notNull(url, "'url' must not be null");
     Assert.notNull(method, "'method' must not be null");
     ClientHttpResponse response = null;
     try {
        ClientHttpRequest request = createRequest(url, method);
        if (requestCallback != null) {
           requestCallback.doWithRequest(request);
        }
        response = request.execute();

        // Set ContentType to XML
        response.getHeaders().setContentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_XML);

        if (!getErrorHandler().hasError(response)) {
           logResponseStatus(method, url, response);
        }
        else {
           handleResponseError(method, url, response);
        }
        if (responseExtractor != null) {
           return responseExtractor.extractData(response);
        }
        else {
           return null;
        }
     }
     catch (IOException ex) {
        throw new ResourceAccessException("I/O error on " + method.name() +
              " request for \"" + url + "\":" + ex.getMessage(), ex);
     }
     finally {
        if (response != null) {
           response.close();
        }
     }

  }

  private void logResponseStatus(HttpMethod method, URI url, ClientHttpResponse response) {
     if (logger.isDebugEnabled()) {
        try {
           logger.debug(method.name() + " request for \"" + url + "\" resulted in " +
                 response.getRawStatusCode() + " (" + response.getStatusText() + ")");
        }
        catch (IOException e) {
           // ignore
        }
     }
  }

  private void handleResponseError(HttpMethod method, URI url, ClientHttpResponse response) throws IOException {
     if (logger.isWarnEnabled()) {
        try {
           logger.warn(method.name() + " request for \"" + url + "\" resulted in " +
                 response.getRawStatusCode() + " (" + response.getStatusText() + "); invoking error handler");
        }
        catch (IOException e) {
           // ignore
        }
     }
     getErrorHandler().handleError(response);
  }
}

Try this:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackson-databind</artifactId>
    <version>2.12.1</version>
</dependency>

Or you can use

public void setSupportedMediaTypes(List supportedMediaTypes)

method which belongs to AbstractHttpMessageConverter<T>, to add some ContentTypes you like. This way can let the MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter canRead() your response, and transform it to your desired Class, which on this case,is ProductList Class.

and I think this step should hooked up with the Spring Context initializing. for example, by using

implements ApplicationListener { ... }