REST/Jersey - Content negotiation via URI extensions

REST,Jersey - Content negotiation via URI extensions

If you have REST service that wanted to return both JSON & XML type, then one way is to set media type in the REST HTTP request header in "Accept" field

Setting media type in HTTP header:

GET /books/123
Accept:  application/json (or application/xml)

Other way is to set the return type in URI extensions as,

GET /books/123.json   - to return json format
GET /books/123.xml    - to return xml format

How to configure Jersey to support URI extensions for content type ?


If you are using Jersey < 2.0 then, URI extensions for media type can be done as mentioned in blog - http://zcox.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/uri-extensions-in-jersey/

If you use Jersey  2.x then, the way to do is configure param "jersey.config.server.mediaTypeMapping" in web.xml file,

Sample web.xml
-----------------

	<servlet>
		<servlet-name>Todos</servlet-name>
		<servlet-class>org.glassfish.jersey.servlet.ServletContainer</servlet-class>
		<init-param>
			<param-name>jersey.config.server.mediaTypeMappings</param-name>
			<param-value>txt : text/plain, xml : application/xml, json : application/json</param-value>
		</init-param>
		<load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
	</servlet>


This uses filter class: org.glassfish.jersey.server.filter.UriConnegFilter that is implementation of javax.ws.rs.container.ContainerRequestFilter Interface.  I noticed that this filter is enabled by default.