Spring Boot Rest Client

This time I will show you how to consume a REST service using Spring Boot and a Groovy library based in HTTPBuilder RESTClient by jgritman.

Let’s start creating a new Spring Boot project with web dependencies:

spring init --dependencies=web --build=gradle --language=groovy spring-boot-rest-client

Here is the complete build.gradle file generated:

buildscript {
  ext {
    springBootVersion = '1.5.12.RELEASE'
  }
  repositories {
    mavenCentral()
  }
  dependencies {
    classpath("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-gradle-plugin:${springBootVersion}")
  }
}

apply plugin: 'groovy'
apply plugin: 'org.springframework.boot'

version = '0.0.1-SNAPSHOT'
sourceCompatibility = 1.8

repositories {
  mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
  compile('org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web')
  compile('org.codehaus.groovy:groovy-all')
  testCompile('org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-test')
}

Then add the RESTClient dependency to the build.gradle file

compile('org.codehaus.groovy.modules.http-builder:http-builder:0.7.1')

In this example we are going to consume a RESTClient service for this project Jugoterapia Which is an Android application mainly focused in improve your healty based in juice recipes, this project is the server side, it is exposing recipes and beverages as API service.

And we will request this recipe as example: http://jugoterapia.josdem.io/jugoterapia-server/beverage/beverage?beverageId=35

{
"id": 35,
"name": "Jugo nutritivo (Zanahoria)",
"ingredients": "4 Zanahorias,1 Tallo de apío,1 Pera,5 hojas de espinacas",
"recipe": "Lava perfectamente todos los ingrendientes. Pasa la zanahoria por el extractor, el apio, las espinacas y la pera. Mezcla todo perfectamente y bebe de inmediato. La espinaca es una excelente fuente de hierro. Promueve el transporte y depósito de oxí­geno en los tejidos, aumenta la fuerza muscular, ayuda a bajar de peso, favorece el tránsito intestinal, beneficia a mujeres embarazadas y niños debido a su contenido de ácido fólico (vitamina B9), mejora la visión y mantiene la presión arterial balanceada."
}

So let’s create a service to consume this end-point:

package com.jos.dem.rest.client.service

interface RestClient {

  def getBeverage()

}

And this is the implementation RestServiceImpl

package com.jos.dem.rest.client.service.impl

import org.springframework.stereotype.Service

import groovyx.net.http.RESTClient

import com.jos.dem.rest.client.service.RestClient
import com.jos.dem.rest.client.exception.BusinessException

import org.slf4j.Logger
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory

@Service
class RestClientImpl implements RestClient {

  Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(this.class)

  def getBeverage(){
    try {
      log.info "Calling Service"
      RESTClient restClient = new RESTClient()
      def result = restClient.get(
        uri : 'http://jugoterapia.josdem.io/jugoterapia-server/beverage/beverage?beverageId=35'
      )
      result.data
    } catch(Exception ex) {
      log.warn "Error ${ex.message}"
      throw new BusinessException(ex.message)
    }
  }

}

That’s it, we are requesting from the end-point our beverage as an GET request and if something fails we are throwing an BusinessException which is a wrapper exception.

package com.jos.dem.rest.client.exception

class BusinessException extends RuntimeException {

  BusinessException(String msg){
    super(msg)
  }

  BusinessException(String msg, Throwable cause) {
    super(msg, cause)
  }

}

After calling restClient.get() in our RestClientImpl we get an HttpResponseDecortator with headers, response status, body, etc. So we can call getData() to get body response as a Map. In that way we can use Spring unmarshalling to convert that map to a beverage object.

In order to consume that service we will get the bean from the Spring application context so we can call getBeverage() method.

package com.jos.dem.rest.client

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication
import org.springframework.context.ConfigurableApplicationContext

import com.jos.dem.rest.client.model.Beverage
import com.jos.dem.rest.client.service.RestClient

@SpringBootApplication
class RestClientApplication {

  static void main(String[] args) {
    ConfigurableApplicationContext context = SpringApplication.run RestClientApplication, args
    Beverage beverage = context.getBean(RestClient.class).getBeverage()
    println "beverage: ${beverage.dump()}"
  }

}

To browse the project go here, to download the project:

git clone https://github.com/josdem/spring-boot-rest-client.git

To run the project:

gradle bootRun

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