MOXy as Your JAX-RS JSON Provider – Server Side

Blaise DoughanApril 16th, 2012Last Updated: October 21st, 2012

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In a previous series of posts I covered how EclipseLink JAXB (MOXy) can be leveraged to create a RESTful data access service. In this post I will cover how easy it is to leverage MOXy’s new JSON binding on the server side to add support for JSON messages based on JAXB mappings.

Why EclipseLink JAXB (MOXy)?

Below are some of the advantages of using MOXy as your JSON binding provider:

Widest support for JAXB annotations among JSON binding providers.
Support for both XML and JSON: Binding to JSON & XML – Geocode Example.
MOXy contains extensions such as @XmlInverseReference for mapping JPA entities to JSON and XML: Part 3 – Mapping JPA entities to XML (using JAXB).
External mapping document as an alternative to annotations: MOXy’s XML Metadata in a JAX-RS Service.

CustomerService

The message types that a JAX-RS service understands is controlled using the @Produces and @Consumes annotations. In this post I have specified that all the operations now support “application/json” in addition to “application/xml”. A more detailed description of this service is available in the following post: Creating a RESTful Web Service – Part 4/5.

package org.example;
  
import java.util.List;
import javax.ejb.*;
import javax.persistence.*;
import javax.ws.rs.*;
import javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType;
  
@Stateless
@LocalBean
@Path("/customers")
public class CustomerService {
  
    @PersistenceContext(unitName="CustomerService",
                        type=PersistenceContextType.TRANSACTION)
    EntityManager entityManager;
  
    @POST
    @Consumes({MediaType.APPLICATION_XML, MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON})
    public void create(Customer customer) {
        entityManager.persist(customer);
    }
  
    @GET
    @Produces({MediaType.APPLICATION_XML, MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON})
    @Path("{id}")
    public Customer read(@PathParam("id") long id) {
        return entityManager.find(Customer.class, id);
    }
  
    @PUT
    @Consumes({MediaType.APPLICATION_XML, MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON})
    public void update(Customer customer) {
        entityManager.merge(customer);
    }
  
    @DELETE
    @Path("{id}")
    public void delete(@PathParam("id") long id) {
        Customer customer = read(id);
        if(null != customer) {
            entityManager.remove(customer);
        }
    }
  
    @GET
    @Produces({MediaType.APPLICATION_XML, MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON})
    @Path("findCustomersByCity/{city}")
    public List<Customer> findCustomersByCity(@PathParam("city") String city) {
        Query query = entityManager.createNamedQuery("findCustomersByCity");
        query.setParameter("city", city);
        return query.getResultList();
    }
  
}

MOXyJSONProvider

We will implement a JAX-RS MessageBodyReader/MessageBodyWriter to plugin support for MOXy’s JSON binding. This implementation is generic enough that it could be used as is to enable JSON-binding for any JAX-RS service using MOXy as the JAXB provider. Some interesting items to note:

There are no compile time dependencies on MOXy.
The eclipselink.media-type property is used to enable JSON binding on the unmarshaller (line 34) and marshaller (line 55).
The eclipselink.json.include-root property is used to indicate that the @XmlRootElement annotation should be ignored in the JSON binding (lines 35 and 56).
When creating the JAXBContext the code first checks to see if a JAXBContext has been registered for this type (lines 70 and 71). This is useful if you want to leverage MOXy’s external mapping document: MOXy’s XML Metadata in a JAX-RS Service.

package org.example;
 
import java.io.*;
import java.lang.annotation.Annotation;
import java.lang.reflect.*;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource;
 
import javax.ws.rs.*;
import javax.ws.rs.core.*;
import javax.ws.rs.ext.*;
import javax.xml.bind.*;
 
@Provider
@Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
@Consumes(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
public class MOXyJSONProvider implements
    MessageBodyReader<Object>, MessageBodyWriter<Object>{
 
    @Context
    protected Providers providers;
 
    public boolean isReadable(Class<?> type, Type genericType,
        Annotation[] annotations, MediaType mediaType) {
        return true;
    }
 
    public Object readFrom(Class<Object> type, Type genericType,
            Annotation[] annotations, MediaType mediaType,
            MultivaluedMap<String, String> httpHeaders, InputStream entityStream)
            throws IOException, WebApplicationException {
            try {
                Class<?> domainClass = getDomainClass(genericType);
                Unmarshaller u = getJAXBContext(domainClass, mediaType).createUnmarshaller();
                u.setProperty("eclipselink.media-type", mediaType.toString());
                u.setProperty("eclipselink.json.include-root", false);
                return u.unmarshal(new StreamSource(entityStream), domainClass).getValue();
            } catch(JAXBException jaxbException) {
                throw new WebApplicationException(jaxbException);
            }
    }
 
    public boolean isWriteable(Class<?> type, Type genericType,
        Annotation[] annotations, MediaType mediaType) {
        return true;
    }
 
    public void writeTo(Object object, Class<?> type, Type genericType,
        Annotation[] annotations, MediaType mediaType,
        MultivaluedMap<String, Object> httpHeaders,
        OutputStream entityStream) throws IOException,
        WebApplicationException {
        try {
            Class<?> domainClass = getDomainClass(genericType);
            Marshaller m = getJAXBContext(domainClass, mediaType).createMarshaller();
            m.setProperty("eclipselink.media-type", mediaType.toString());
            m.setProperty("eclipselink.json.include-root", false);
            m.marshal(object, entityStream);
        } catch(JAXBException jaxbException) {
            throw new WebApplicationException(jaxbException);
        }
    }
 
    public long getSize(Object t, Class<?> type, Type genericType,
        Annotation[] annotations, MediaType mediaType) {
        return -1;
    }
 
    private JAXBContext getJAXBContext(Class<?> type, MediaType mediaType) 
        throws JAXBException {
        ContextResolver<JAXBContext> resolver 
            = providers.getContextResolver(JAXBContext.class, mediaType);
        JAXBContext jaxbContext;
        if(null == resolver || null == (jaxbContext = resolver.getContext(type))) {
            return JAXBContext.newInstance(type);
        } else {
            return jaxbContext;
        }
    }
 
    private Class<?> getDomainClass(Type genericType) {
        if(genericType instanceof Class) {
            return (Class<?>) genericType;
        } else if(genericType instanceof ParameterizedType) {
            return (Class<?>) ((ParameterizedType) genericType).getActualTypeArguments()[0];
        } else {
            return null;
        }
    }
 
}

Server Setup

If you are using GlassFish as your application server then you need to replace the following EclipseLink bundles with their counterpart from an EclipseLink 2.4 install.