JerseyTest WebTarget POST support

Question

I am developing a light weight server App with a RESTful api implemented with Jersey 2.12 and Jackson 2.

I am writing tests while developing using JUnit and JerseyTest. I know that my Jersey Resources work as expected including the marshalling from and to JSON because I tested them manually with the PostMan Chrome plugin.

My GET tests with query parameters work well too, based on the example in the Jersey documentation Here is a simplified (I have left out boilerplate code to make the idea clearer) example of a test I'd like to write:

import static org.junit.Assert.assertTrue;

import javax.ws.rs.client.Entity;
import javax.ws.rs.client.WebTarget;
import javax.ws.rs.core.Application;
import javax.ws.rs.core.Response;

import org.glassfish.jersey.server.ResourceConfig;
import org.glassfish.jersey.test.JerseyTest;
import org.junit.Test;

import com.acme.api.rest.SessionsEndPoint;
import com.acme.api.rest.beans.UserCredentialsBean;

public class TestSession extends JerseyTest {

    @Override
    protected Application configure() {
        return new ResourceConfig(SessionsEndPoint.class);
    }

    @Test
    public void test() {
        UserCredentialsBean userCredentialsBean = new UserCredentialsBean();
        userCredentialsBean.setUserId("alice");
        userCredentialsBean.setPassword("secret");
        WebTarget theTarget = target("sessions/login");
        Response response = theTarget.request().post( Entity.entity(UserCredentialsBean.class, "application/json"));
        assertTrue(true);
    }

}

The basic problem I have is that I cannot find any documentation on how to properly use the WebTarget class for post requests. the WebTarget theTarget is constructed correctly but the line:

Response response = theTarget.request().post( Entity.entity(UserCredentialsBean.class, "application/json"));

does not work.

As I understand the WebTarget class is fairly new in the JerseyTest framework. Is there anybody who can point me at any recent documentation, examples, or just explain here how I can get this to work?

Answer 1

I did do a lot of googling before I posted my question here, but after checking back my eyes suddenly fell on this Related Question. I did search on SO several times but never found this question. Anyway, here's the solution to my problem:

I started implementing as explained in the accepted answer and got it to work quickly.

Then I decided that you it should be possible to avoid using JSON string representations at all, and I got that to work to.

The code above works if modified as follows:

import static org.junit.Assert.assertTrue;

import javax.ws.rs.client.Entity;
import javax.ws.rs.client.WebTarget;
import javax.ws.rs.core.Application;
import javax.ws.rs.core.Response;

import org.glassfish.jersey.server.ResourceConfig;
import org.glassfish.jersey.test.JerseyTest;
import org.junit.Test;

import com.acme.api.rest.SessionsEndPoint;
import com.acme.api.rest.beans.UserCredentialsBean;

public class TestSession extends JerseyTest {

    @Override
    protected Application configure() {
        return new ResourceConfig(SessionsEndPoint.class);
    }

    @Test
    public void test() {
        UserCredentialsBean userCredentialsBean = new UserCredentialsBean();
        userCredentialsBean.setUserId("alice");
        userCredentialsBean.setPassword("secret");
        LoginResponseBean loginResponseBean = 
             target("sessions/login")
                 .request(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_TYPE)
                 .post(
                     Entity.entity(
                         userCredentialsBean,
                         MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_TYPE
                     ),
                     LoginResponseBean.class
                 );
        assertTrue(
                loginResponseBean.isSuccess()
            &&
                loginResponseBean.getToken().length()==36
        );

    }

}

LoginResponseBean is a plain Java Bean. Just getters and setters and a default constructor.

Marshalling to- and from JSON is done by the framework, either by moxy or jackson as the JSON provider.