Question

I need make my method capable of accepting JSON data. Say I need to make a GET REST method call with JSON data.

GET /player/login/ HTTP/1.0 

Content-Type: application/json
Request Body    
{
                "username": ”xyz”,
                "password": "234fsf34"
}

I am not getting how to take this JSON data within my REST API method.

@GET
@Path("player/login")
@Produces("application/json)
public responseData loginPlayer(){
}

Answer 1

If you want to use authentication with a GET, the ‘proper’ way to do it is to use basic access authentication.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_access_authentication

The client takes the username and password and forms a string of the form user:password. So in your example, that will be:

"xyz:234fsf34"

The client then base64 encodes this string. If the client is also Java, you could use the apache commons Base64 class for encoding/decoding:

http://commons.apache.org/codec/apidocs/org/apache/commons/codec/binary/Base64.html

So you get something like:

"eHl6OjIzNGZzZjM0"

And the client sends this in the GET, but as an HTTP Header (not Request Body):

GET /player/login/ HTTP/1.0
  Content-Type: application/json
  Authorization: Basic eHl6OjIzNGZzZjM0

The server reads this in the HTTP Header ‘Authorization’ much like the example code here:
https://cwiki.apache.org/WINK/jax-rs-http-headers.html

Then decodes it with the (Base64 apache commons class).

Then you can respond to the GET with appropriate data.