Json and POJO using the single service

[Deerak]

Greetings,

My controller is declared to return a POJO:

@RequestMapping("/btc")
    private ResponseEntity<BtcDto> touchClaims(BtcDto example) {
        return new ResponseEntity<BtcDto>(bankruptcyService.foo(example), HttpStatus.OK);
    }

Sometimes clients need the POJOs, so they use

restTpl.postForEntity("http://localhost:9999/btc", ex, BtcDto.class, new HashMap<String, Object>()).getBody();

which works as a charm. Next step it to make

restTpl.postForEntity("http://localhost:9999/btc", ex, String.class, new HashMap<String, Object>()).getBody();

to return Json representation of the return object (some clients don't need POJOs, so I think Spring should be clever enough not to un-marshal Json payload back to POJO). Right now I'm getting Jackson framework exception "I/O error: Can not deserialize instance of java.lang.String out of START_OBJECT token"

I'd also like to add that the current working version of application leverages Jersey Web App, not Spring, and seems that Jersey makes both these scenarios work somehow. What I'm trying to do is to replace Jersey app with Spring and Jackson.

Any pointers on how to address this situation would be highly appreciated!
Alex

[Deerak]

I've finally got this working by adding StringHttpMessageConverter to REST template bean definition

    <bean class="org.springframework.web.client.RestTemplate">
        <property name="messageConverters">
            <list>
                <bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.StringHttpMessageConverter"/>
                <bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter"/>
            </list>
        </property>
    </bean>