JAX-RS: inheritance in server method

[mschipperheyn]

Hi,

I'm using JAX-RS and spring 3. I have a problem with inheritance on the receiving end of the service and I'm wondering if there is a way to work around this.

Types of beans sent
public class ParentVO{
 String label;
}
public class ChildVO extends ParentVO{
 String label;
 int count;
}

client
ChildVO vo = new ChildVO();
vo.setLabel("Hello");
vo.setCount(1);
RequestObject request = new RequestObject();
request.setVO(vo);

ResponseObject response = importProxy.importContent(request); 

public class RequestObject{
 ParentVO vo;
}

Server JAX-RS client

@POST
    @Path("/import/standard")
    @Secured({"ROLE_WS","ROLE_ADMIN"})
    @Produces("text/xml")
    public ResponseObject importContent(RequestObject bean){
} 

I'm trying to work with a single importContent method in stead of creating one specific to eaach type of bean.

But "vo" is always of type ParentVO including when a ChildVO is sent.

Is there a way to do this with JAX-RS?

I've also tried the following with the same result.

client
ChildVO vo = new ChildVO();
vo.setLabel("Hello");
vo.setCount(1);

RequestObject<ChildVO> request = new RequestObject<ChildVO>();
request.setVO(vo);

ResponseObject response = importProxy.importContent(request);
ResponseObject response = importProxy.importChild(request); 

public class RequestObject<T extends ParentVO>{
 T vo;
}

Server JAX-RS client

@POST
    @Path("/import/standard")
    @Secured({"ROLE_WS","ROLE_ADMIN"})
    @Produces("text/xml")
    public ResponseObject importContent(RequestObject bean){
}

@POST
    @Path("/import/standard")
    @Secured({"ROLE_WS","ROLE_ADMIN"})
    @Produces("text/xml")
    public ResponseObject importChild(RequestObject<ChildVO> bean){
} 

In the case above both importContent and importChild produced a vo of type ParentVO, which surprised me.

Any suggestions? Primarily, I would like to avoid unique method signatures for each child.

Kind regards,

Marc