How to consume REST in Java

Question

Using Java tools,

wscompile for RPC
wsimport for Document
etc..

I can use WSDL to generate the stub and Classes required to hit the SOAP Web Service.

But I have no idea how I can do the same in REST. How can I get the Java classes required for hitting the REST Web Service. What is the way to hit the service anyway?

Can anyone show me the way?

Answer 1

Just make an http request to the required URL with correct query string, or request body.

For example you could use java.net.HttpURLConnection and then consume via connection.getInputStream(), and then covnert to your objects.

In spring there is a restTemplate that makes it all a bit easier.

Answer 2

JAX-RS but you can also use regular DOM that comes with standard Java

Answer 3

Apache Http Client APIs are very commonly used for calling HTTP Rest services.

Here is one of example of consuming HTTP GET call.

import java.io.IOException;
import org.apache.http.HttpResponse;
import org.apache.http.client.ClientProtocolException;
import org.apache.http.client.HttpClient;
import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpGet;
import org.apache.http.client.methods.HttpUriRequest;
import org.apache.http.impl.client.HttpClientBuilder;

public class CallHTTPGetService {

public static void main(String[] args) throws ClientProtocolException, IOException {


    HttpClient client = HttpClientBuilder.create().build();
    HttpUriRequest httpUriRequest = new HttpGet("URL");

    HttpResponse response = client.execute(httpUriRequest);
    System.out.println(response);

}
}

Use following maven dependency if using Maven project.

<dependency>
        <groupId>org.apache.httpcomponents</groupId>
        <artifactId>httpclient</artifactId>
        <version>4.5.1</version>
    </dependency>
    <!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.apache.httpcomponents/httpmime -->
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.apache.httpcomponents</groupId>
        <artifactId>httpmime</artifactId>
        <version>4.5.1</version>
    </dependency>

Answer 4

If you also need to convert that xml string that comes as a response to the service call, an x object you need can do it as follows:

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.io.StringReader;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.net.MalformedURLException;
import java.net.URL;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import javax.xml.bind.JAXB;
import javax.xml.bind.JAXBException;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;

import org.w3c.dom.CharacterData;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import org.w3c.dom.Node;
import org.w3c.dom.NodeList;
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;

public class RestServiceClient {

// http://localhost:8080/RESTfulExample/json/product/get
public static void main(String[] args) throws ParserConfigurationException,
SAXException {

try {

URL url = new URL(
    "http://localhost:8080/CustomerDB/webresources/co.com.mazf.ciudad");
HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
conn.setRequestMethod("GET");
conn.setRequestProperty("Accept", "application/xml");

if (conn.getResponseCode() != 200) {
throw new RuntimeException("Failed : HTTP error code : "
    + conn.getResponseCode());
}

BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
    (conn.getInputStream())));

String output;

Ciudades ciudades = new Ciudades();
System.out.println("Output from Server .... \n");
while ((output = br.readLine()) != null) {
System.out.println("12132312");
System.err.println(output);

DocumentBuilder db = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance()
    .newDocumentBuilder();
InputSource is = new InputSource();
is.setCharacterStream(new StringReader(output));

Document doc = db.parse(is);
NodeList nodes = ((org.w3c.dom.Document) doc)
    .getElementsByTagName("ciudad");

for (int i = 0; i < nodes.getLength(); i++) {
    Ciudad ciudad = new Ciudad();
    Element element = (Element) nodes.item(i);

    NodeList name = element.getElementsByTagName("idCiudad");
    Element element2 = (Element) name.item(0);

    ciudad.setIdCiudad(Integer
        .valueOf(getCharacterDataFromElement(element2)));

    NodeList title = element.getElementsByTagName("nomCiudad");
    element2 = (Element) title.item(0);

    ciudad.setNombre(getCharacterDataFromElement(element2));

    ciudades.getPartnerAccount().add(ciudad);
}
}

for (Ciudad ciudad1 : ciudades.getPartnerAccount()) {
System.out.println(ciudad1.getIdCiudad());
System.out.println(ciudad1.getNombre());
}

conn.disconnect();

} catch (MalformedURLException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
} catch (IOException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}

public static String getCharacterDataFromElement(Element e) {
Node child = e.getFirstChild();
if (child instanceof CharacterData) {
CharacterData cd = (CharacterData) child;
return cd.getData();
}
return "";
}
}

Note that the xml structure that I expected in the example was as follows:

<ciudad><idCiudad>1</idCiudad><nomCiudad>BOGOTA</nomCiudad></ciudad>