Spring Boot REST with XML Support

Question

I made a simple REST webservice with Spring Boot 1.2.5 and it works fine for JSON but I can't make this work to return XML.

This is my controller:

@RestController
..
@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET,  produces = {MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE, MediaType.APPLICATION_XML_VALUE})
@ResponseStatus(HttpStatus.OK)
public List<Activity> getAllActivities() {
    return activityRepository.findAllActivities();
}

When I call it with Accept: application/json everything works, but when I try with application/xml I get some HTML with 406 Error and message:

The resource identified by this request is only capable of generating responses 
with characteristics not acceptable according to the request "accept" headers.

My model objects:

@XmlRootElement
public class Activity {

    private Long id;
    private String description;
    private int duration;
    private User user; 
    //getters & setters...
}

@XmlRootElement
public class User {

    private String name;
    private String id;
    //getters&setters...
}

My pom.xml

<parent>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
    <version>1.2.5.RELEASE</version>
    <relativePath /> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
</parent>

<properties>
    <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
    <java.version>1.8</java.version>
</properties>

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

    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
        <scope>provided</scope>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
        <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>

</dependencies>

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

Do I need some additional jars in my pom.xml to make this work? I tried adding jaxb-api or jax-impl but it didn't help.

Answer 1

We can achieve this as below :

Code

---

        package com.subu;

        import java.io.Serializable;

        import javax.persistence.Entity;
        import javax.persistence.GeneratedValue;
        import javax.persistence.Id;
        import javax.persistence.Table;
        import javax.xml.bind.annotation.*;

        @Entity
        @XmlRootElement(name = "person")
        @Table(name="person")

        public class Person implements Serializable{
            private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

            @Id
            @GeneratedValue
            private Long id;

            @XmlAttribute(name = "first-name")
            private String first_name;

            public Long getId() {
                return id;
            }

            public void setId(Long id) {
                this.id = id;
            }

            public String getFirst_name() {
                return first_name;
            }

            public void setFirst_name(String first_name) {
                this.first_name = first_name;
            }

            public String getLast_name() {
                return last_name;
            }

            public void setLast_name(String last_name) {
                this.last_name = last_name;
            }

            public String getDate_of_birth() {
                return date_of_birth;
            }

            public void setDate_of_birth(String date_of_birth) {
                this.date_of_birth = date_of_birth;
            }

            @XmlAttribute(name = "last-name")
            private String last_name;

            @XmlAttribute(name = "dob")
            private String date_of_birth;


        }

---

        @RestController
        public class PersonController {

            @Autowired
            private PersonRepository personRepository;

            @RequestMapping(value = "/persons/{id}", method = RequestMethod.GET,produces={MediaType.APPLICATION_XML_VALUE},headers = "Accept=application/xml")
            public ResponseEntity<?> getPersonDetails(@PathVariable Long id, final HttpServletRequest request)throws Exception {
                Person personResponse=personRepository.findPersonById(id);
                return ResponseEntity.ok(personResponse);
            }

        }

---

        package com.subu;

        import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
        import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.EnableAutoConfiguration;
        import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;
        import org.springframework.boot.builder.SpringApplicationBuilder;
        import org.springframework.boot.context.web.SpringBootServletInitializer;
        import org.springframework.context.annotation.ComponentScan;
        import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
        import org.springframework.scheduling.annotation.EnableScheduling;


        @SpringBootApplication
        @Configuration
        @ComponentScan
        @EnableAutoConfiguration
        @EnableScheduling
        public class Application extends SpringBootServletInitializer{



           public static void main(String[] args) {
              SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
           }

           @Override
           protected SpringApplicationBuilder configure(SpringApplicationBuilder application) {
               return application.sources(Application.class);
           }

           private static Class<Application> applicationClass = Application.class;

        }

---

Answer 2

To make this work in Spring Boot without using Jersey we need to add this dependency:

<dependency>
        <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.dataformat</groupId>
        <artifactId>jackson-dataformat-xml</artifactId>
</dependency>

The output will be a bit ugly but it works:

<ArrayList 
    xmlns="">
    <item>
        <id/>
        <description>Swimming</description>
        <duration>55</duration>
        <user/>
    </item>
    <item>
        <id/>
        <description>Cycling</description>
        <duration>120</duration>
        <user/>
    </item>
</ArrayList>

Here is nice tutorial: http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2015/04/jax-rs-2-x-vs-spring-mvc-returning-an-xml-representation-of-a-list-of-objects.html