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I have an application with Spring 3.0.5.RELEASE trying to get the full content of a post using @RequestBody. The method is called, but the string passed is always empty. I have checked, by placing breakpoints, that the StringHttpMessageConverter is called, but the inner HttpInputMessage is empty.

I've seen this issue with both Jetty and Tomcat, so I'm discarding it's a problem with the container.

Here is my sample controller:

@Controller @RequestMapping("/") public class SubscriptionController { @RequestMapping(value = "/requestbody", method = RequestMethod.POST) public ModelAndView mycustomAction(@RequestBody String body) { // body is always empty Logger.getLogger(this.getClass()).debug("REQUEST BODY '" + body + "'"); return new ModelAndView("empty"); } }

My application context is defined as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:p="http://www.springframework.org/schema/p" xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context" xmlns:mvc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc" xsi:schemaLocation=" http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/context http://www.springframework.org/schema/context/spring-context-3.0.xsd http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc http://www.springframework.org/schema/mvc/spring-mvc-3.0.xsd"> <!-- Enable auto detection of controllers --> <context:component-scan base-package="com.big.viajerotelcel.controller" /> <!-- use annotation driven mvc and one single validator with JSR-303 standard --> <mvc:annotation-driven /> <!-- Message source for this context, loaded from localized "messages_xx" files --> <bean id="messageSource" class="org.springframework.context.support.ReloadableResourceBundleMessageSource"> <property name="basenames" value="classpath:i18n/messages" /> <property name="defaultEncoding" value="UTF-8" /> </bean> <!-- Declare the Interceptor --> <mvc:interceptors> <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.LocaleChangeInterceptor" p:paramName="locale" /> </mvc:interceptors> <!-- Declare the Resolver --> <bean id="localeResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.i18n.SessionLocaleResolver" /> <!-- will load Tiles definitions! --> <bean id="tilesConfigurer" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesConfigurer"> <property name="definitions"> <list> <value>/WEB-INF/general.xml</value> </list> </property> </bean> <!-- Tiles view resolver --> <bean id="viewResolver" class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.UrlBasedViewResolver"> <property name="viewClass" value="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.tiles2.TilesView" /> </bean> <!-- Configure the multipart resolver --> <bean id="multipartResolver" class="org.springframework.web.multipart.commons.CommonsMultipartResolver"> <!-- one of the properties available; the maximum file size in bytes (5MB) --> <property name="maxUploadSize" value="5120000" /> </bean> <!-- Adding these lines has no effect, the StringHttpMessageConverter is called either way --> <!-- <bean id="stringHttpMessageConverter" class="org.springframework.http.converter.StringHttpMessageConverter"/>--> <!-- --> <!-- <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.mvc.annotation.AnnotationMethodHandlerAdapter">--> <!-- <property name="messageConverters">--> <!-- <list>--> <!-- <ref bean="stringHttpMessageConverter"/>--> <!-- </list>--> <!-- </property>--> <!-- </bean>--> </beans>

I'm testing this using curl as follows:

curl -d asd=123 -d qwe=456 http://localhost:8080/requestbody

Any ideas or help is more than welcomed!

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  • Do you have any interceptors? Perhaps they do something with the request object to render the following access to request body useless? Remember that you can either use a request reader, or request stream, but not both. Commented Apr 27, 2011 at 16:47
  • as shown in my context xml file, I do have a LocaleChangeInterceptor, but even after removing it the issue persists. Commented Apr 27, 2011 at 17:23

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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Here is a code snippet of ServletServerHttpRequest, which extends HttpInputMessage. I am pretty positive this is the implementation that you are using in your code:

public InputStream getBody() throws IOException { return this.servletRequest.getInputStream(); }

In other words, the request body is meant to be read as the input stream of the HttpServletRequest object.

The request's input stream is not valid in several situations, but I can't find the correct documentation for it at the moment. For example, if you call request.getParameter() on a post request, tomcat has to read the input stream in order to interpret the parameters, thus afterwards when you read the input stream, it is empty because it has reached the end already.

Perhaps you are invoking getParameter somewhere in an interceptor or perhaps a filter defined in web.xml. Another option is that Spring is doing that for you, for example, if your controller has some other method with complex @RequestMappings (such as reading param values, or header values).

I have two suggestions for you:

  1. Add a servlet filter (before spring gets a chance to act), and wrap the request with your own wrapper (just extend HttpServletRequestWrapper). This way you can put breakpoints or log messages at some methods of the request object and see who's calling them.

  2. Use a pojo object parameter, and setup the bindings. It seems like a much cleaner way to read post data.

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3 Comments

Indeed, Spring's org.springframework.web.filter.HiddenHttpMethodFilter was to blame. I changed a few urls and changed some mappings and now it's working. Thanks!
I had the same issue and your suggestion helped. In my Controller method I used both @RequestBody and @RequestParam annotations. The body was empty until I removed @RequestParam. The funny thing is that the same configuration works fine with RequestMethod=PUT instead of POST
@filip that's most likely because of the different Content-Type header set to application/x-www-form-urlencoded on POST requests. This marks the body as carrier of request parameters.
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How are you POSTing messages to this URL? Are you positive that the HTTP request contains what you think it does? I suggest removing any web browsers from the picture and drop down to something low-level like curl which lets you send any type of HTTP message yourself.

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i'm using curl -d asd=123 -d qwe=456 localhost:8080/requestbody and Wireshark properly shows the body is not empty.
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Had a similar problem - the string received by spring controller was always empty. Tinkered with my spring config but with no result. Finally the problem was that the client was actually was not sending anything body!(due to some typo of mine)

If found with a similar error, its worth checking once if the client's payload is actually non-empty.

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Another reason that your XML may not be getting marshalled into your JAXB object is related to the namespaces in the XML.

Versions of java after 1.8.101 are more strict about parsing namespaced XML. See JAXB doesn't unmarshall after updating java from 1.8.0_77 to 1.8.0_121

In my case I was seeing a request body with all nulls and no exception being thrown to indicate that the XML parsing had failed.

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