How to get access to HTTP header information in Spring MVC REST controller?

Question

I am new to web programming in general, especially in Java, so I just learned what a header and body is.

I'm writing RESTful services using Spring MVC. I am able to create simple services with the @RequestMapping in my controllers. I need help understanding how to get HTTP header information from a request that comes to my method in my REST service controller. I would like to parse out the header and get some attributes from it.

Could you explain how I go about getting that information?

Vidya · Accepted Answer · 2013-10-24T03:00:07.560

304

When you annotate a parameter with @RequestHeader, the parameter retrieves the header information. So you can just do something like this:

@RequestHeader("Accept")

to get the Accept header.

So from the documentation:

@RequestMapping("/displayHeaderInfo.do")
public void displayHeaderInfo(@RequestHeader("Accept-Encoding") String encoding,
                              @RequestHeader("Keep-Alive") long keepAlive)  {

}

The Accept-Encoding and Keep-Alive header values are provided in the encoding and keepAlive parameters respectively.

And no worries. We are all noobs with something.

edited Oct 24 '13 at 03:00

answered Oct 24 '13 at 02:54

Vidya

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Thank you. In Some code examples in the company I work for, I see HttpServletRequest as the parameter and there is a getHeader method on it. Which approach is preferable? – Horse Voice Oct 24 '13 at 14:36
1

Prefer abstractions to the low-level details of an API. I would much rather have Spring MVC abstract away the details of the `Servlet` API. I can use the annotations to pull what I need out of the request. – Vidya Oct 24 '13 at 14:50
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Should mention, you'll get a 400 bad request error as a response in case if request will not contain such header. More flexible way is direct access to request headers as described in: http://stackoverflow.com/a/28209710/1828296 – lospejos Jul 14 '16 at 13:43
I guess it depends on what you want to do, but a 400 response is the behavior I would almost always want in that case. – Vidya Nov 28 '16 at 17:41
2

@lospejos that can be avoided by using the ```required``` flag like `@RequestHeader(name = "Keep-Alive", required = false) long keepAlive` that will set the keepAlive to null if not provided. There is also `defaultValue` field for the annotation https://docs.spring.io/spring-framework/docs/5.0.7.RELEASE/javadoc-api/org/springframework/web/bind/annotation/RequestHeader.html – Niccolò Sep 18 '19 at 12:07

score 95 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 11 '18 at 16:51

95

You can use the @RequestHeader annotation with HttpHeaders method parameter to gain access to all request headers:

@RequestMapping(value = "/restURL")
public String serveRest(@RequestBody String body, @RequestHeader HttpHeaders headers) {
    // Use headers to get the information about all the request headers
    long contentLength = headers.getContentLength();
    // ...
    StreamSource source = new StreamSource(new StringReader(body));
    YourObject obj = (YourObject) jaxb2Mashaller.unmarshal(source);
    // ...
}

edited Apr 11 '18 at 16:51

Paulo Merson

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answered Oct 24 '13 at 03:18

Debojit Saikia

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What about the body of the http request? How do I access the header specifics? could you explain to me if HttpHeaders is a map that I need a key to access? – Horse Voice Oct 24 '13 at 16:33
HttpHeaders has getters to get the header specifics. you can explore this link to get the details: http://docs.spring.io/spring/docs/3.1.x/javadoc-api/org/springframework/http/HttpHeaders.html – Debojit Saikia Oct 24 '13 at 16:40
edited my answer to show how you can get access to the request body. – Debojit Saikia Oct 24 '13 at 16:46
1

Why is streamsource needed? It seems too complicated. There must be an easier way than to use streams etc. – Horse Voice Oct 25 '13 at 16:06
Here `StringReader` is used to read the incoming character stream. `StreamSource` works as a holder for a transformation source in the form of a stream of XML markup. – Debojit Saikia Oct 25 '13 at 16:11
Just what I was looking for. You can do a similar trick with request parameters: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7312436/spring-mvc-how-to-get-all-request-params-in-a-map-in-spring-controller/18489124#18489124 – Rob Worsnop Dec 09 '15 at 21:46

score 18 · Answer 3 · edited Aug 01 '17 at 18:33

18

My solution in Header parameters with example is user="test" is:

@RequestMapping(value = "/restURL")
  public String serveRest(@RequestBody String body, @RequestHeader HttpHeaders headers){

System.out.println(headers.get("user"));
}

edited Aug 01 '17 at 18:33

Onic Team

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answered Aug 01 '17 at 17:35

Armando Cordova

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Sreepad Chitragar · Answer 4 · 2020-12-04T07:47:54.140

You can use HttpEntity to read both Body and Headers.

   @RequestMapping(value = "/restURL")
   public String serveRest(HttpEntity<String> httpEntity){
                MultiValueMap<String, String> headers = 
                httpEntity.getHeaders();
                Iterator<Map.Entry<String, List<String>>> s = 
                headers.entrySet().iterator();
                while(s.hasNext()) {
                    Map.Entry<String, List<String>> obj = s.next();
                    String key = obj.getKey();
                    List<String> value = obj.getValue();
                }
                
                String body = httpEntity.getBody();

    }

How to get access to HTTP header information in Spring MVC REST controller?

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