Rest Webservice to pass and accept the List

Question

I am new to rest webservice. Could some one please help me to identify the correct approach.

I want My webservice to be consumed Json object ( List id) and produces the Json object.

I want to pass given json data to my service.

    {
   id : "1"
   id : "2"
   id : "3"
   id : "4"
 }

and My service is looking like -

@RequestMapping(value = "/read/ids", method = RequestMethod.POST)
@ResponseBody
public List<ids> getValues(Collection<String> ids){
  // some calculation....
 }

This code is not working for me. I am using spring framework to create my service.

alernate way that is working for me is -

pass the simple data

1,2

and then service to consume it.

@RequestMapping(value = "/read/ids", method = RequestMethod.POST)
@ResponseBody
public List<String> getValues(@Valid @RequestBody String ids){
    List<String> testids = new ArrayList<>();
    if(ids.contains(",")){
        String[] idArray = ids.split(",");
        for(String id : idArray){
            testids.add(service.findByid(id));
        }
    }else{
        testids.add(service.findByid(ids));
    }

    return testids;
}

BUt I don;t think its correct approach

Note : I don't want to create unnecessary object that would contain list

Answer 1

You pass JSON like that. ArrayList does not accept key and value pair. Then add your keys

 JSON:
            [
                "1",
                "2",
                "3",
                "4"
            ]       
        @RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST, value = "/read/ids/",headers="Accept=application/json")
        public ArrayList<String>  test(@RequestBody ArrayList<String> ids) throws Exception {
                return ids;
            }