How to properly send a JSON array with Spring api?

Question

So I'm working on building a lil website that's supposed to showcase insects and some info about em, and I've gotten the fetch call and the site itself up and running, no problem. On the back-end I have an API with a Spring Boot that retrieves my InsectObject, which for now just holds a title and description string and that works fine.

Now, excuse me as I try to explain the issue to the best of my abilities.

My problem is that I'm getting a response as follows from my API:

[
    {
        "id": 1,
        "title": "mantis",
        "description": "leafy boi"
    },
    {
        "id": 2,
        "title": "moth",
        "description": "fly boi"
    }
]

Wheres I want it to return it as:

{
bugs: [
    {
        "id": 1,
        "title": "mantis",
        "description": "leafy boi"
    },
    {
        "id": 2,
        "title": "moth",
        "description": "fly boi"
    }
  ]
}

Which is how I think a proper api call should look like. But then again, it's the first time I venture into this territory and I've only been following tutorials and documentation, building my own picture along the way.

If it's of any relevance, my rest controller looks like this:

@RestController
public class BugSiteController {

    private final InsectRepository repository;

    BugSiteController(InsectRepository repository) {
        this.repository = repository;
    }

    // get all bugs from the repo
    @CrossOrigin(origins = "http://localhost:3000")
    @GetMapping("/bugs")
    List<InsectObject> getAll() { 

        return repository.findAll();
    }
}

What am I missing? Is it something in my getAll() method I should change to get the desired result? or should I be able to work with the first result regardless? Should I maybe return something other than a List<>? I tried with ResponseEntity but had the exact same result, just way more verbose.

Thanks in advance.

You can create a class wrapper for a response like: class BugResponse { private List<InsectObject> bugs; getters/setters .. } and use it as the return of BugSiteController.getAll() — Alexander Terekhov
– Alexander Terekhov, Commented Jun 10, 2019 at 8:56

Avi · Accepted Answer · 2019-06-10 09:51:26Z

1

You could set the value in Model or you could set it in a Map.

Model

class InsectResponse {

  @JsonProperty("bug")
  private List<InsectObject> insectObject;
  // Getter, Setter & Constructor
}

Controller

@GetMapping("/bugs")
public ReponseEntity getAll() { 
   return ResponseEntity.ok(new InsectResponse(repository.findAll()));
}

or

@GetMapping("/bugs")
public ReponseEntity getAll() { 
   return ResponseEntity.ok(new HashMap<String, List<InsectObject>>() {{
            put("bug", repository.findAll());
        }});
}

answered Jun 10, 2019 at 9:51

Avi

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2 Comments

Erinn Bastias Over a year ago

Thank you, using a Map worked perfectly, and it was less stuff to implement (I like keeping my codes small). May I ask what's going on in the ResponseEntity.ok() method? I haven't encountered double {{}}} brackets and I don't understand why the put() method is in there and fully functional.

Avi Over a year ago

I have initialized the Map anonymously, instead of creating an object and calling a put method. You could check javatutorial.net/java-hashmap-inline-initialization it will give you clear understanding

Maciej Kowalski · Accepted Answer · 2019-06-10 09:00:13Z

1

On the InsectObject entity class add:

@JsonRootName(value = "bug")

answered Jun 10, 2019 at 9:00

Maciej Kowalski

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