REST API - Use the Accept application json HTTP Header

Question

When I make a request  I get a response in XML  but what I need is JSON  In the doc it is stated in order to get a JSON in return  Use the Accept  application json HTTP Header   Where do I find the HTTP Header to put Accept  application json inside   My guess is it is not suppose to be inside the URL-request  which looks like   http   localhost 8080 otp routers default plan fromPlace 52 5895 13 2836 amp toPlace 52 5461 13 3588 amp date 2017 04 04 amp time 12 00 00

User · Answer

Basically I use Fiddler or Postman for testing API's.

In fiddler, in request header you need to specify instead of xml, html you need to change it to json. Eg: Accept: application/json. That should do the job.

User · Answer

You guessed right  HTTP Headers are not part of the URL  And when you type a URL in the browser the request will be issued with standard headers  Anyway REST Apis are not meant to be consumed by typing the endpoint in the address bar of a browser  The most common scenario is that your server consumes a third party REST Api  To do so your server-side code forges a proper GET   PUT POST DELETE  request pointing to a given endpoint  URL  setting  when needed  like your case  some headers and finally  maybe  sending some data  as typically occurrs in a POST request for example   The code to forge the request  send it and finally get the response back depends on your server side language  If you want to test a REST Api you may use curl tool from the command line  curl makes a request and outputs the response to stdout  unless otherwise instructed   In your case the test request would be issued like this   curl -H  quot Accept  application json quot   http   localhost 8080 otp routers default plan fromPlace 52 5895 13 2836 amp toPlace 52 5461 13 3588 amp date 2017 04 04 amp time 12 00 00   The H or --header directive sets a header and its value

User · Answer

Well Curl could be a better option for json representation but in that case it would be difficult to understand the structure of json because its in command line  if you want to get your json on browser you simply remove all the XML Annotations like -   XmlRootElement name  person    XmlAccessorType XmlAccessType NONE   XmlAttribute  XmlElement   from your model class and than run the same url  you have used for xml representation   Make sure that you have jacson-databind dependency in your pom xml   lt dependency gt     lt groupId gt com fasterxml jackson core lt  groupId gt     lt artifactId gt jackson-databind lt  artifactId gt     lt version gt 2 4 1 lt  version gt   lt  dependency gt

User · Answer

Here s a handy site to test out your headers  You can see your browser headers and also use cURL to reflect back whatever headers you send   For example  you can validate the content negotiation like this   This Accept header prefers plain text so returns in that format -    curl -H  Accept  application json q 0 9 text plain  http   gethttp info Accept application json q 0 9 text plain   Whereas this one prefers JSON and so returns in that format -    curl -H  Accept  application json text   q 0 99  http   gethttp info Accept       Accept    application json text   q 0 99

[json] REST API - Use the "Accept: application/json" HTTP Header

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