The Guide to RestTemplate

1. Overview

In this tutorial, we’re going to illustrate the broad range of operations where the Spring REST Client — RestTemplate — can be used, and used well.

For the API side of all examples, we’ll be running the RESTful service from here.

2. Use GET to Retrieve Resources

2.1. Get Plain JSON

Let’s start simple and talk about GET requests, with a quick example using the getForEntity() API:

RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate();
String fooResourceUrl
  = "http://localhost:8080/spring-rest/foos";
ResponseEntity<String> response
  = restTemplate.getForEntity(fooResourceUrl + "/1", String.class);
Assertions.assertEquals(response.getStatusCode(), HttpStatus.OK);

Notice that we have full access to the HTTP response, so we can do things like check the status code to make sure the operation was successful or work with the actual body of the response:

ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
JsonNode root = mapper.readTree(response.getBody());
JsonNode name = root.path("name");
Assertions.assertNotNull(name.asText());

We’re working with the response body as a standard String here and using Jackson (and the JSON node structure that Jackson provides) to verify some details.

2.2. Retrieving POJO Instead of JSON

We can also map the response directly to a Resource DTO:

public class Foo implements Serializable {
    private long id;

    private String name;
    // standard getters and setters
}

Now we can simply use the getForObject API in the template:

Foo foo = restTemplate
  .getForObject(fooResourceUrl + "/1", Foo.class);
Assertions.assertNotNull(foo.getName());
Assertions.assertEquals(foo.getId(), 1L);

3. Use HEAD to Retrieve Headers

Let’s now have a quick look at using HEAD before moving on to the more common methods.

We’re going to be using the headForHeaders() API here:

HttpHeaders httpHeaders = restTemplate.headForHeaders(fooResourceUrl);
Assertions.assertTrue(httpHeaders.getContentType().includes(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON));

4. Use POST to Create a Resource

In order to create a new Resource in the API, we can make good use of the postForLocation(), postForObject() or postForEntity() APIs.

The first returns the URI of the newly created Resource, while the second returns the Resource itself.

4.1. The postForObject() API

RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate();

HttpEntity<Foo> request = new HttpEntity<>(new Foo("bar"));
Foo foo = restTemplate.postForObject(fooResourceUrl, request, Foo.class);
Assertions.assertNotNull(foo);
Assertions.assertEquals(foo.getName(), "bar");

4.2. The postForLocation() API

Similarly, let’s have a look at the operation that instead of returning the full Resource, just returns the Location of that newly created Resource:

HttpEntity<Foo> request = new HttpEntity<>(new Foo("bar"));
URI location = restTemplate
  .postForLocation(fooResourceUrl, request);
Assertions.assertNotNull(location);

4.3. The exchange() API

Let’s have a look at how to do a POST with the more generic exchange API:

RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate();
HttpEntity<Foo> request = new HttpEntity<>(new Foo("bar"));
ResponseEntity<Foo> response = restTemplate
  .exchange(fooResourceUrl, HttpMethod.POST, request, Foo.class);
 
Assertions.assertEquals(response.getStatusCode(), HttpStatus.CREATED);
 
Foo foo = response.getBody();
 
Assertions.assertNotNull(foo);
Assertions.assertEquals(foo.getName(), "bar");

4.4. Submit Form Data

Next, let’s look at how to submit a form using the POST method.

First, we need to set the Content-Type header to application/x-www-form-urlencoded.

This makes sure that a large query string can be sent to the server, containing name/value pairs separated by &:

HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
headers.setContentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_FORM_URLENCODED);

We can wrap the form variables into a LinkedMultiValueMap:

MultiValueMap<String, String> map= new LinkedMultiValueMap<>();
map.add("id", "1");

Next, we build the Request using an HttpEntity instance:

HttpEntity<MultiValueMap<String, String>> request = new HttpEntity<>(map, headers);

Finally, we can connect to the REST service by calling restTemplate.postForEntity() on the Endpoint: /foos/form

ResponseEntity<String> response = restTemplate.postForEntity(
  fooResourceUrl + "/form", request , String.class);
Assertions.assertEquals(response.getStatusCode(), HttpStatus.CREATED);

5. Use OPTIONS to Get Allowed Operations

Next, we’re going to have a quick look at using an OPTIONS request and exploring the allowed operations on a specific URI using this kind of request; the API is optionsForAllow:

Set<HttpMethod> optionsForAllow = restTemplate.optionsForAllow(fooResourceUrl);
HttpMethod[] supportedMethods
  = {HttpMethod.GET, HttpMethod.POST, HttpMethod.PUT, HttpMethod.DELETE};
Assertions.assertTrue(optionsForAllow.containsAll(Arrays.asList(supportedMethods)));

6. Use PUT to Update a Resource

Next, we’ll start looking at PUT and more specifically the exchange() API for this operation, since the template.put API is pretty straightforward.

6.1. Simple PUT With exchange()

We’ll start with a simple PUT operation against the API — and keep in mind that the operation isn’t returning a body back to the client:

Foo updatedInstance = new Foo("newName");
updatedInstance.setId(createResponse.getBody().getId());
String resourceUrl = 
  fooResourceUrl + '/' + createResponse.getBody().getId();
HttpEntity<Foo> requestUpdate = new HttpEntity<>(updatedInstance, headers);
template.exchange(resourceUrl, HttpMethod.PUT, requestUpdate, Void.class);

6.2. PUT With exchange() and a Request Callback

Next, we’re going to be using a request callback to issue a PUT.

Let’s make sure we prepare the callback, where we can set all the headers we need as well as a request body:

RequestCallback requestCallback(final Foo updatedInstance) {
    return clientHttpRequest -> {
        ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
        mapper.writeValue(clientHttpRequest.getBody(), updatedInstance);
        clientHttpRequest.getHeaders().add(
          HttpHeaders.CONTENT_TYPE, MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE);
        clientHttpRequest.getHeaders().add(
          HttpHeaders.AUTHORIZATION, "Basic " + getBase64EncodedLogPass());
    };
}

Next, we create the Resource with a POST request:

ResponseEntity<Foo> response = restTemplate
  .exchange(fooResourceUrl, HttpMethod.POST, request, Foo.class);
Assertions.assertEquals(response.getStatusCode(), HttpStatus.CREATED);

And then we update the Resource:

Foo updatedInstance = new Foo("newName");
updatedInstance.setId(response.getBody().getId());
String resourceUrl = fooResourceUrl + '/' + response.getBody().getId();
restTemplate.execute(
  resourceUrl, 
  HttpMethod.PUT, 
  requestCallback(updatedInstance), 
  clientHttpResponse -> null);

7. Use DELETE to Remove a Resource

To remove an existing Resource, we’ll make quick use of the delete() API:

String entityUrl = fooResourceUrl + "/" + existingResource.getId();
restTemplate.delete(entityUrl);

8. Configure Timeout

There are four different types of timeouts we can configure:

• Connect Timeout – the time to wait for the HTTP connection to be established. We configure this in RequestConfig
• Read Timeout – the time the client should wait for the server to respond. We configure this in RequestConfig
• Socket Timeout – the connection timeout for SSL handshakes or CONNECT requests. We configure this in SocketConfig
• Connection Request Timeout – the amount of time to wait when requesting a connection from RequestConfig‘s connection manager

We can configure RestTemplate to time out by simply using ClientHttpRequestFactory:

RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate(getClientHttpRequestFactory());

ClientHttpRequestFactory getClientHttpRequestFactory() {
    int timeout = 5;
    HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory clientHttpRequestFactory = new 
      HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory();
    clientHttpRequestFactory.setConnectionRequestTimeout(timeout*1000);
    clientHttpRequestFactory.setConnectTimeout(timeout*2000);
    clientHttpRequestFactory.setReadTimeout(timeout*3000);
    return clientHttpRequestFactory;
}

Also, we can use HttpClient to configure all types of timeout options. A benefit of using this approach is that we can set other configuration settings as well in the ConnectionConfig, RequestConfig, and SocketConfig:

ClientHttpRequestFactory getClientHttpRequestFactoryAlternate() {
    long timeout = 5; 
    int readTimeout = 5;

    // Connect timeout
    ConnectionConfig connectionConfig = ConnectionConfig.custom()
      .setConnectTimeout(Timeout.ofMilliseconds(timeout*1000))
      .build();
    
    // Connection Request timeout    
    RequestConfig requestConfig = RequestConfig.custom()
      .setConnectionRequestTimeout(Timeout.ofMilliseconds(timeout*2000))
      .build();

    // Socket timeout
    SocketConfig socketConfig = SocketConfig.custom() 
      .setSoTimeout(Timeout.ofMilliseconds(timeout*1000)).build();

    PoolingHttpClientConnectionManager connectionManager = 
      new PoolingHttpClientConnectionManager();
    connectionManager.setDefaultSocketConfig(socketConfig);
    connectionManager.setDefaultConnectionConfig(connectionConfig);    

    CloseableHttpClient httpClient = HttpClientBuilder.create()
      .setConnectionManager(connectionManager)
      .setDefaultRequestConfig(requestConfig)
      .build();

    HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory clientHttpRequestFactory = new 
      HttpComponentsClientHttpRequestFactory(httpClient);

    // Read timeout
    clientHttpRequestFactory.setReadTimeout(readTimeout*3000);
  
    return clientHttpRequestFactory;
}

9. Conclusion

In this article, we went over the main HTTP Verbs, using RestTemplate to orchestrate requests using all of these.

If you want to dig into how to do authentication with the template, check out our article on Basic Auth with RestTemplate.