[java] Get the POST request body from HttpServletRequest

I am trying to get the whole body from the HttpServletRequest object.

The code I am following looks like this:

if ( request.getMethod().equals("POST") )
{
    StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
    BufferedReader bufferedReader = null;
    String content = "";

    try {
        //InputStream inputStream = request.getInputStream();
        //inputStream.available();
        //if (inputStream != null) {
        bufferedReader =  request.getReader() ; //new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream));
        char[] charBuffer = new char[128];
        int bytesRead;
        while ( (bytesRead = bufferedReader.read(charBuffer)) != -1 ) {
            sb.append(charBuffer, 0, bytesRead);
        }
        //} else {
        //        sb.append("");
        //}

    } catch (IOException ex) {
        throw ex;
    } finally {
        if (bufferedReader != null) {
            try {
                bufferedReader.close();
            } catch (IOException ex) {
                throw ex;
            }
        }
    }

    test = sb.toString();
}

and I am testing the functionality with curl and wget as follows:

curl --header "MD5: abcd" -F "[email protected] http://localhost:8080/abcd.html"

wget --header="MD5: abcd" --post-data='{"imei":"351553012623446","hni":"310150","wdp":false}' http://localhost:8080/abcd.html"

But the while ( (bytesRead = bufferedReader.read(charBuffer)) != -1 ) does not return anything, and so I get nothing appended on StringBuffer.

If all you want is the POST request body, you could use a method like this:

static String extractPostRequestBody(HttpServletRequest request) throws IOException {
    if ("POST".equalsIgnoreCase(request.getMethod())) {
        Scanner s = new Scanner(request.getInputStream(), "UTF-8").useDelimiter("\\A");
        return s.hasNext() ? s.next() : "";
    }
    return "";
}

Credit to: https://stackoverflow.com/a/5445161/1389219

Easy way with commons-io.

IOUtils.toString(request.getReader());

https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-io/javadocs/api-2.5/org/apache/commons/io/IOUtils.html

If the request body is empty, then it simply means that it's already been consumed beforehand. For example, by a request.getParameter(), getParameterValues() or getParameterMap() call. Just remove the lines doing those calls from your code.

In Java 8, you can do it in a simpler and clean way :

if ("POST".equalsIgnoreCase(request.getMethod())) 
{
   test = request.getReader().lines().collect(Collectors.joining(System.lineSeparator()));
}

I resolved that situation in this way. I created a util method that return a object extracted from request body, using the readValue method of ObjectMapper that is capable of receiving a Reader.

public static <T> T getBody(ResourceRequest request, Class<T> class) {
    T objectFromBody = null;
    try {
        ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();
        HttpServletRequest httpServletRequest = PortalUtil.getHttpServletRequest(request);
        objectFromBody = objectMapper.readValue(httpServletRequest.getReader(), class);
    } catch (IOException ex) {
        log.error("Error message", ex);
    }
    return objectFromBody;
}

Be aware, that your code is quite noisy. I know the thread is old, but a lot of people will read it anyway. You could do the same thing using the guava library with:

    if ("POST".equalsIgnoreCase(request.getMethod())) {
        test = CharStreams.toString(request.getReader());
    }

This works for both GET and POST:

@Context
private HttpServletRequest httpRequest;


private void printRequest(HttpServletRequest httpRequest) {
    System.out.println(" \n\n Headers");

    Enumeration headerNames = httpRequest.getHeaderNames();
    while(headerNames.hasMoreElements()) {
        String headerName = (String)headerNames.nextElement();
        System.out.println(headerName + " = " + httpRequest.getHeader(headerName));
    }

    System.out.println("\n\nParameters");

    Enumeration params = httpRequest.getParameterNames();
    while(params.hasMoreElements()){
        String paramName = (String)params.nextElement();
        System.out.println(paramName + " = " + httpRequest.getParameter(paramName));
    }

    System.out.println("\n\n Row data");
    System.out.println(extractPostRequestBody(httpRequest));
}

static String extractPostRequestBody(HttpServletRequest request) {
    if ("POST".equalsIgnoreCase(request.getMethod())) {
        Scanner s = null;
        try {
            s = new Scanner(request.getInputStream(), "UTF-8").useDelimiter("\\A");
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
        return s.hasNext() ? s.next() : "";
    }
    return "";
}

This will work for all HTTP method.

public class HttpRequestWrapper extends HttpServletRequestWrapper {
    private final String body;

    public HttpRequestWrapper(HttpServletRequest request) throws IOException {
        super(request);
        body = IOUtils.toString(request.getReader());
    }

    @Override
    public ServletInputStream getInputStream() throws IOException {
        final ByteArrayInputStream byteArrayInputStream = new ByteArrayInputStream(getBody().getBytes());
        ServletInputStream servletInputStream = new ServletInputStream() {
            public int read() throws IOException {
                return byteArrayInputStream.read();
            }

            @Override
            public boolean isFinished() {
                return false;
            }

            @Override
            public boolean isReady() {
                return false;
            }

            @Override
            public void setReadListener(ReadListener listener) {
            }

        };
        return servletInputStream;
    }

    public String getBody() {
        return this.body;
    }
}