JAX-RS @PathParam How to pass a String with slashes, hyphens & equals too

Question

I am new to JAX-RS and I am trying to use Jersey to build a simple RESTful Webservice.

I have 2 questions. Please clarify these:

I am trying to have my simple webservice like this URL http://localhost:8080/SampleJersey/rest/inchi/InChIName

The InChIName is a string like this InChI=1S/C9H8O4/c1-6(10)13-8-5-3-2-4-7(8)9(11)12/h2- 5H,1H3,(H,11,12). How do I pass this as a @PathParam, I mean a normal String is working fine but here there are slashes,hyphens, and commas. How do I make it to ignore these. I tried putting it in quotes, but that didnt work. How should I do this?
I need to pass that InChI to another webservice and that returns an XML as an output and I want to display that XML output as my Webservice's output. If I have @Produces("application/xml") will it work?

This is my code:

@Path("/inchi")
public class InChIto3D {
    @GET
    @Path("{inchiname}")
    @Produces("application/xml")
    public String get3DCoordinates(@PathParam("inchiname")String inchiName) {
        String ne="";
        try{
            URL eutilsurl = new URL(
                      "http://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/esearch.fcgi?"
                      + "db=pccompound&term=%22"+inchiName+"%22[inchi]");
            BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(
                                    new InputStreamReader(eutilsurl.openStream()));
            String inputline;
            while ((inputline=in.readLine())!=null)
                ne=ne+inputline;
        }catch (MalformedURLException e1) {
        }catch (IOException e2){
        }
        return ne;
    }
}

score 41 · Answer 1 · edited Jul 31 '14 at 12:38

41

This is how you enable slashes in path params:

@Path("{inchiname : .+}")
public String get3DCoordinates(@PathParam("inchiname")String inchiName)

edited Jul 31 '14 at 12:38

answered Oct 24 '12 at 17:37

yegor256

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2

Thanks yegor – I used this regex definition approach, but found it only worked via the @Path param (instead of @PathParam). @Path("{inchiname: .+}"); [via jersey2] – ThomasMH Mar 23 '14 at 21:35

score 19 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 28 '10 at 07:42

19

Tomcat does not Accept %2F in URLs: http://tomcat.apache.org/security-6.html. You can turn off this behavior.

answered Sep 28 '10 at 07:42

simonox

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AmanicA · Answer 3 · 2014-05-22T20:32:50.450

12

The following should work:

@GET
@Path("{inchiname : (.+)?}")
@Produces("application/xml")
public String get3DCoordinates(@PathParam("inchiname")String inchiName) {

(This is sort of mentioned in another answer and comment, I'm just explicitly putting it in a separate answer to make it clear)

edited May 22 '14 at 20:32

answered May 05 '14 at 22:11

AmanicA

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Thank you so much. It saved my day and solved my problem perfectly. Thanks a bunch. – Vinod Jayachandran Feb 01 '16 at 09:03
Can you tell how to achieve the same for query parameters ? – Vinod Jayachandran Feb 01 '16 at 11:31
In my humble opinion, this is the most concise and accurate answer. – RockyMountainHigh Sep 30 '16 at 16:20

score 10 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 20 '10 at 04:10

10

The parameters should be URL encoded. You can use java.net.URLEncoder for this.

String encodedParam = URLEncoder.encode(unencodedParam, "UTF-8");

The / will then be translated to %2F.

answered Feb 20 '10 at 04:10

BalusC

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Click at the 1st link. You'll see that `=` is a reserved character as well and that it will be encoded to `%3D`. Also, it's a little of effort to just do a `System.out.println(URLEncoder.encode("=", "UTF-8"));` in a test application with a `main()` ;) – BalusC Feb 20 '10 at 17:36
2

Thanks Balus. I still am missing something. If I give the following in the REST URL http://localhost:8080/SampleJersey/rest/inchi/"hello-there" evrything gets encoded fine. But if I introduce the slash in there like this http://localhost:8080/SampleJersey/rest/inchi/"hello/there" I get resource not found error. How do I get the slashes encoded here, & if I want the slashes as such without being encoded what do I do? – Sashi Kiran Challa Feb 20 '10 at 18:52
@BalusC BalusC, what should I do if Tomcat, Apache and JBoss don't support %2f ? I can enable it, but I don't want to (security reasons). – Oleg Pavliv May 19 '14 at 14:51
@BalusC: how to handle pathparams containing slash (`/`) and space (` `) ? `URLEncoder.encode("a b/1", "UTF-8")` results in `a+b%2F1` which is correct for a query param but for path param I expected `a%20b%2F1`. – raho Jun 15 '18 at 09:43

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Feb 24 '10 at 00:02

I got this to work using @QueryParam() rather than @PathParam.

@Path("/inchi")
public class InChIto3D {
    @GET
    //@Path("{inchiname}")
    @Produces("application/xml")
    public String get3DCoordinates(@QueryParam("inchiname") String inchiName) {
          String ne="";
          try{
              URL eutilsurl = new URL(
                      "http://eutils.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/eutils/esearch.fcgi?"
                      + "db=pccompound&term=%22"+inchiName+"%22[inchi]");
              BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(
                                new InputStreamReader(eutilsurl.openStream()));
             String inputline;
             while ((inputline=in.readLine())!=null)
                 ne=ne+inputline;
          }catch (MalformedURLException e1) {
          }catch (IOException e2){
          }
          return ne;
    }
}

Thus the URL structure would be like this http://myrestservice.com/rest/inchi?inchiname=InChIhere

With @PathParam I read in the API that it will not accept slashes. I am wondering if I can use any Regular Expression in @Path just to ignore all slashes in the string that would be entered in quotes" ".

JAX-RS @PathParam How to pass a String with slashes, hyphens & equals too

5 Answers5

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