Spring MVC with Spring Integration HTTP: how to pass the queryString avoiding the "?" encoding with "%3F" ?

Question

I have two Spring MVC applications interconneted between each others with Spring Integration HTTP.

I have an "application1" and an "application2".

The application1 receive this HTTP GET request:

http://localhost:8080/application1/api/persons/search/findByName?name=Name

The application1 manage the request with this @Controller:

@Controller
public class ApplicationController {

    @RequestMapping(value = "/api/{repository}/search/{methodName}", method = RequestMethod.GET)
    public void search(@PathVariable(value="repository") String repository, 
                       @PathVariable(value="methodName") String methodName, 
                       ModelMap model, 
                       HttpServletRequest request, 
                       HttpServletResponse response) {                     
        // handling the request ...
    }
}

Here is what I can see in the request properties:

getRequestURI=/application1/api/persons/search/findByName
getRequestedSessionId=null
getContextPath=/application1
getPathTranslated=null
getAuthType=null
getMethod=GET
getQueryString=name=Name
getServletPath=/api/persons/search/findByName
getPathInfo=null
getRemoteUser=null

I want to "transfer" this request to the application2 using Spring Integration HTTP with an <int-http:outbound-gateway>.

The message for the channel used by the outbound-gateway is originated in the @Controller in this way:

MessagingChannel messagingChannel = (MessagingChannel)appContext.getBean("requestChannelBean");
String payload = repository+"/search/"+methodName;
Message<String> message = MessageBuilder.withPayload(payload).build();
MessageChannel requestChannel = messagingChannel.getRequestChannel();
MessagingTemplate messagingTemplate = new MessagingTemplate();
Message<?> response = messagingTemplate.sendAndReceive(requestChannel, message);

This is the <int-http:outbound-gateway> configuration:

<int-http:outbound-gateway id="gateway" rest-template="restTemplate"
    url="http://localhost:8080/application2/api/service/{pathToCall}"
    http-method="POST" header-mapper="headerMapper" extract-request-payload="true"
    expected-response-type="java.lang.String">
    <int-http:uri-variable name="pathToCall" expression="payload"/>
</int-http:outbound-gateway>

This gateway produces an HTTP POST request towards the url:

http://localhost:8080/application2/api/service/persons/search/findByName

But in this request I lose the original QueryString received by the application1.

I have tried to add the queryString directly to the payload as follows:

String queryString = "";
if (request.getQueryString()!=null)
    queryString = request.getQueryString();
String payload = repository+"/search/"+methodName+"?"+queryString;

But this doesn't work: the produced url is:

http://localhost:8080/application2/api/service/persons/search/findByName%3Fname=Name

The "?" symbol is replaced by "%3F", so the called method is "/service/persons/search/findByName%3Fname=Name", instead of "/service/persons/search/findByName"

I suppose that it depends on the http-method="POST"; I want to use the POST method in any case, because I want to use this "service" for general requests.

So what I have to do in order to transfer the queryString of the original request to the other side in the simplest way as possible?

Thanks in advance.

I'd say that the behaviour of application1 is valid - to encode the payload. It should rather be application2's responsibility to decode it properly (change `%3F` back to `?`). Do you have control over application2? — Adam Michalik, Jul 29 '16 at 08:37
This might help you then: http://stackoverflow.com/q/6138127/466738 — Adam Michalik, Jul 29 '16 at 08:42
You have right Adam: it's the application1 that encodes the URL, and I have understood why. I also have found the way to avoid the URI encoding: it's enough to set the `encode-uri="false"` in the `` configuration (the default is "true"). — Alessandro C, Jul 29 '16 at 08:51

score 4 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 29 '16 at 08:54

I have found the answer.

The encoding of the "?" into "%3F" was made by the <int-http:outbound-gateway> beacuse the encode-uri="false" attribute was missing.

The outbound gateway encodes the URI by default, because the encode-uri attribute is setted to true by default.

Spring MVC with Spring Integration HTTP: how to pass the queryString avoiding the "?" encoding with "%3F" ?

1 Answers1