JAX-RS How to return JSON and HTTP status code together

Question

I m writing a REST web app  NetBeans 6 9  JAX-RS  TopLink Essentials  and trying to return JSON and HTTP status code  I have code ready and working that returns JSON when the HTTP GET method is called from the client  Essentially      Path  get id     GET   Produces  application json    public M    getMachineToUpdate  PathParam  id   String id              some code to return JSON            return myJson          But I also want to return an HTTP status code  500  200  204  etc   along with the JSON data     I tried to use HttpServletResponse     response sendError  error message   500        But this made the browser think it s a  real  500 so the output web page was a regular HTTP 500 error page     I want to return an HTTP status code so that my client-side JavaScript can handle some logic depending on it  to e g  display the error code and message on an HTML page   Is this possible or should HTTP status codes not be used for such thing

User · Answer

Also  notice that by default Jersey will override the response body in case of an http code 400 or more   In order to get your specified entity as the response body  try to add the following init-param to your Jersey  in your web xml configuration file         lt init-param gt           lt  -- used to overwrite default 4xx state pages -- gt           lt param-name gt jersey config server response setStatusOverSendError lt  param-name gt           lt param-value gt true lt  param-value gt       lt  init-param gt

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Here s an example    GET  Path  retrieve  uuid    public Response retrieveSomething  PathParam  uuid   String uuid        if uuid    null    uuid trim   length      0            return Response serverError   entity  UUID cannot be blank   build              Entity entity   service getById uuid       if entity    null            return Response status Response Status NOT FOUND  entity  Entity not found for UUID      uuid  build              String json     convert entity to json     return Response ok json  MediaType APPLICATION JSON  build        Take a look at the Response class     Note that you should always specify a content type  especially if you are passing multiple content types  but if every message will be represented as JSON  you can just annotate the method with  Produces  application json

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I m not using JAX-RS  but I ve got a similar scenario where I use   response setStatus HttpStatus INTERNAL SERVER ERROR value

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I found it very useful to build also a json message with repeated code  like this    POST  Consumes  application json    Produces  application json   public Response authUser JsonObject authData        String email   authData getString  email        String password   authData getString  password        JSONObject json   new JSONObject        if  email equalsIgnoreCase user getEmail     amp  amp  password equalsIgnoreCase user getPassword               json put  status    success            json put  code   Response Status OK getStatusCode             json put  message    User     authData getString  email       authenticated             return Response ok json toString    build          else           json put  status    error            json put  code   Response Status NOT FOUND getStatusCode             json put  message    User     authData getString  email       not found             return Response status Response Status NOT FOUND  entity json toString    build

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The following code worked for me  Injecting the messageContext via annotated setter and setting the status code in my  add  method   import java util Collection  import java util HashMap  import java util Map   import javax ws rs Consumes  import javax ws rs DELETE  import javax ws rs GET  import javax ws rs POST  import javax ws rs PUT  import javax ws rs Path  import javax ws rs Produces  import javax ws rs core Context  import javax ws rs core Response   import org apache cxf jaxrs ext MessageContext   public class FlightReservationService        MessageContext messageContext       private final Map lt Long  FlightReservation gt  flightReservations   new HashMap lt  gt           Context     public void setMessageContext MessageContext messageContext            this messageContext   messageContext              Override     public Collection lt FlightReservation gt  list             return flightReservations values                Path    id         Produces  application json        GET     public FlightReservation get Long id            return flightReservations get id               Path           Consumes  application json        Produces  application json        POST     public void add FlightReservation booking            messageContext getHttpServletResponse   setStatus Response Status CREATED getStatusCode             flightReservations put booking getId    booking               Path           Consumes  application json        PUT     public void update FlightReservation booking            flightReservations remove booking getId             flightReservations put booking getId    booking               Path    id         DELETE     public void remove Long id            flightReservations remove id

User · Answer

If your WS-RS needs raise an error why not just use the WebApplicationException    GET  Produces   MediaType APPLICATION JSON  MediaType APPLICATION XML     Path   id    public MyEntity getFoo  PathParam  id   long id    QueryParam  lang  long idLanguage     if  idLanguage   0          No URL parameter idLanguage was sent     ResponseBuilder builder   Response status Response Status BAD REQUEST       builder entity  Missing idLanguage parameter on request        Response response   builder build        throw new WebApplicationException response               other stuff to return my entity return myEntity

User · Answer

Please look at the example here  it best illustrates the problem and how it is solved in the latest  2 3 1  version of Jersey    https   jersey java net documentation latest representations html d0e3586  It basically involves defining a custom Exception and keeping the return type as the entity  When there is an error  the exception is thrown  otherwise  you return the POJO

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There are several use cases for setting HTTP status codes in a REST web service  and at least one was not sufficiently documented in the existing answers  i e  when you are using auto-magical JSON XML serialization using JAXB  and you want to return an object to be serialized  but also a status code different than the default 200    So let me try and enumerate the different use cases and the solutions for each one   1  Error code  500  404       The most common use case when you want to return a status code different than 200 OK is when an error occurs   For example    an entity is requested but it doesn t exist  404  the request is semantically incorrect  400  the user is not authorized  401  there is a problem with the database connection  500  etc     a  Throw an exception  In that case  I think that the cleanest way to handle the problem is to throw an exception  This exception will be handled by an ExceptionMapper  that will translate the exception into a response with the appropriate error code   You can use the default ExceptionMapper that comes pre-configured with Jersey  and I guess it s the same with other implementations  and throw any of the existing sub-classes of javax ws rs WebApplicationException  These are pre-defined exception types that are pre-mapped to different error codes  for example    BadRequestException  400  InternalServerErrorException  500  NotFoundException  404    Etc  You can find the list here  API  Alternatively  you can define your own custom exceptions and ExceptionMapper classes  and add these mappers to Jersey by the mean of the  Provider annotation  source of this example    public class MyApplicationException extends Exception implements Serializable       private static final long serialVersionUID   1L      public MyApplicationException             super              public MyApplicationException String msg              super msg             public MyApplicationException String msg  Exception e             super msg  e             Provider         Provider     public class MyApplicationExceptionHandler implements ExceptionMapper lt MyApplicationException gt                  Override         public Response toResponse MyApplicationException exception                         return Response status Status BAD REQUEST  entity exception getMessage    build                        Note  you can also write ExceptionMappers for existing exception types that you use   b  Use the Response builder  Another way to set a status code is to use a Response builder to build a response with the intended code   In that case  your method s return type must be javax ws rs core Response  This is described in various other responses such as hisdrewness  accepted answer and looks like this     GET  Path  myresource  id    public Response retrieveSomething  PathParam  id   String id                Entity entity   service getById uuid       if entity    null            return Response status Response Status NOT FOUND  entity  Resource not found for ID      uuid  build                      2  Success  but not 200  Another case when you want to set the return status is when the operation was successful  but you want to return a success code different than 200  along with the content that you return in the body   A frequent use case is when you create a new entity  POST request  and want to return info about this new entity or maybe the entity itself  together with a 201 Created status code   One approach is to use the response object just like described above and set the body of the request yourself  However  by doing this you loose the ability to use the automatic serialization to XML or JSON provided by JAXB   This is the original method returning an entity object that will be serialized to JSON by JAXB    Path       POST  Consumes   MediaType APPLICATION JSON     Produces   MediaType APPLICATION JSON    public User addUser User user       User newuser       do something like DB insert         return newuser      This will return a JSON representation of the newly created user  but the return status will be 200  not 201   Now the problem is if I want to use the Response builder to set the return code  I have to return a Response object in my method  How do I still return the User object to be serialized   a  Set the code on the servlet response  One approach to solve this is to obtain a servlet request object and set the response code manually ourselves  like demonstrated in Garett Wilson s answer     Path       POST  Consumes   MediaType APPLICATION JSON     Produces   MediaType APPLICATION JSON    public User addUser User user   Context final HttpServletResponse response        User newUser              set HTTP code to  201 Created      response setStatus HttpServletResponse SC CREATED       try           response flushBuffer         catch Exception e         return newUser      The method still returns an entity object and the status code will be 201   Note that to make it work  I had to flush the response  This is an unpleasant resurgence of low-level Servlet API code in our nice JAX RS resource  and much worse  it causes the headers to be unmodifiable after this because they were already sent on the wire   b  Use the response object with the entity  The best solution  in that case  is to use the Response object and set the entity to be serialized on this response object  It would be nice to make the Response object generic to indicate the type of the payload entity in that case  but is not the currently the case    Path       POST  Consumes   MediaType APPLICATION JSON     Produces   MediaType APPLICATION JSON    public Response addUser User user        User newUser            return Response created hateoas buildLinkUri newUser   entity    entity restResponse  build        In that case  we use the created method of the Response builder class in order to set the status code to 201  We pass the entity object  user  to the response via the entity   method   The result is that the HTTP code is 401 as we wanted  and the body of the response is the exact same JSON as we had before when we just returned the User object  It also adds a location header   The Response class has a number of builder method for different statuses  stati    such as    Response accepted   Response ok   Response noContent   Response notAcceptable    NB  the hateoas object is a helper class that I developed to help generate resources URIs  You will need to come up with your own mechanism here     That s about it   I hope this lengthy response helps somebody

User · Answer

Expanding on the answer of Nthalk with Microprofile OpenAPI you can align the return code with your documentation using  APIResponse annotation   This allows tagging a JAX-RS method like   GET  APIResponse responseCode    204   public Resource getResource ResourceRequest request     You can parse this standardized annotation with a ContainerResponseFilter   Provider public class StatusFilter implements ContainerResponseFilter         Override     public void filter ContainerRequestContext requestContext  ContainerResponseContext responseContext            if  responseContext getStatus      200                for  final var annotation   responseContext getEntityAnnotations                      if  annotation instanceof APIResponse response                        final var rawCode   response responseCode                        final var statusCode   Integer parseInt rawCode                        responseContext setStatus statusCode                                                        A caveat occurs when you put multiple annotations on your method like   APIResponse responseCode    201   description    first use case    APIResponse responseCode    204   description    because you can   public Resource getResource ResourceRequest request

User · Answer

JAX-RS has support for standard custom HTTP codes   See ResponseBuilder and ResponseStatus  for example   http   jackson codehaus org javadoc jax-rs 1 0 javax ws rs core Response ResponseBuilder html status 28javax ws rs core Response Status 29  Keep in mind that JSON information is more about the data associated with the resource application   The HTTP codes are more about the status of the CRUD operation being requested    at least that is how it s supposed to be in REST-ful systems

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In case you want to change the status code because of an exception  with JAX-RS 2 0 you can implement an ExceptionMapper like this  This handles this kind of exception for the whole app    Provider public class UnauthorizedExceptionMapper implements ExceptionMapper lt EJBAccessException gt          Override     public Response toResponse EJBAccessException exception            return Response status Response Status UNAUTHORIZED getStatusCode    build

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If you like to keep your resource layer clean of Response objects  then I recommend you use  NameBinding and binding to implementations of ContainerResponseFilter   Here s the meat of the annotation   package my webservice annotations status   import javax ws rs NameBinding  import java lang annotation Retention  import java lang annotation RetentionPolicy    NameBinding  Retention RetentionPolicy RUNTIME  public  interface Status     int CREATED   201    int value        Here s the meat of the filter   package my webservice interceptors status   import javax ws rs container ContainerRequestContext  import javax ws rs container ContainerResponseContext  import javax ws rs container ContainerResponseFilter  import javax ws rs ext Provider  import java io IOException    Provider public class StatusFilter implements ContainerResponseFilter       Override   public void filter ContainerRequestContext containerRequestContext  ContainerResponseContext containerResponseContext  throws IOException       if  containerResponseContext getStatus      200          for  Annotation annotation   containerResponseContext getEntityAnnotations              if annotation instanceof Status             containerResponseContext setStatus   Status  annotation  value               break                                  And then the implementation on your resource simply becomes   package my webservice resources   import my webservice annotations status StatusCreated  import javax ws rs      Path   my-resource-path   public class MyResource     POST    Status Status CREATED    public boolean create        return true

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The answer by hisdrewness will work  but it modifies the whole approach to letting a provider such as Jackson JAXB automatically convert your returned object to some output format such as JSON  Inspired by an Apache CXF post  which uses a CXF-specific class  I ve found one way to set the response code that should work in any JAX-RS implementation  inject an HttpServletResponse context and manually set the response code  For example  here is how to set the response code to CREATED when appropriate    Path   foos  fooId     PUT  Consumes  application json    Produces  application json   public Foo setFoo  PathParam  fooID   final String fooID  final Foo foo   Context final HttpServletResponse response        TODO store foo in persistent storage   if itemDidNotExistBefore    return 201 only if new object  TODO app-specific logic         response setStatus Response Status CREATED getStatusCode           return foo     TODO get latest foo from storage if needed     Improvement  After finding another related answer  I learned that one can inject the HttpServletResponse as a member variable  even for singleton service class  at least in RESTEasy    This is a much better approach than polluting the API with implementation details  It would look like this    Context    injected response proxy supporting multiple threads private HttpServletResponse response    Path   foos  fooId     PUT  Consumes  application json    Produces  application json   public Foo setFoo  PathParam  fooID   final String fooID  final Foo foo        TODO store foo in persistent storage   if itemDidNotExistBefore    return 201 only if new object  TODO app-specific logic         response setStatus Response Status CREATED getStatusCode           return foo     TODO get latest foo from storage if needed

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I m using jersey 2 0 with message body readers and writers   I had my method return type as a specific entity which was also used in the implementation of the message body writer and i was returning the same pojo  a SkuListDTO       GET      Consumes   application xml    application json         Produces   application xml    application json         Path   skuResync    public SkuResultListDTO getSkuData            return SkuResultListDTO    all i changed was this   I left the writer implementation alone and it still worked   public Response getSkuData       return Response status Response Status FORBIDDEN  entity dfCoreResultListDTO  build

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