HTTP 500 Internal Server Error in simple REST based program. Confused in GET and POST while receiving/sending response from server

Question

I am implementing a basic client server architecture using REST services for the first time. This time I making it more complicated with including some more classes and services with sharing class objects as parameters between client and server. I am running server on ApacheTomcat7. It is getting executed successfully. When I am running my client it is giving me error: javax.ws.rs.InternalServerErrorException: HTTP 500 Internal Server Error I tried debugging my code, it seems like I am not properly receiving/sending response. I know its not wise idea to share all classes here but I has no choice since it has wasted my time a lot. Any help will be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Following is my ImageProgress class. This class is present at both server and client.

@XmlRootElement
public class ImageProgress{
    private String name;

    public ImageProgress( String image_name){
        this.name = image_name;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName( String name ){
        this.name = name;
    }
}

HPCResponse is the class whose object will be returned to client as the server response. HPCResponse will basically return the ImageProgress object which will give me the intended result.

@XmlRootElement
public class HPCResponse
{
    private ImageProgress imgProgress;

    public ImageProgress getImgProgress() {
        return imgProgress;
    }

    public void setImgProgress(ImageProgress imgProgress) {
        this.imgProgress = imgProgress;
    }
}

Following is the service class from server named HpcService which will return the HPCResponse's object as response. As you can see the method startAnalysing accepts object of HPCInfo. Description of HPCInfo is also given below.

@Path( "/hpc" )
@Consumes( MediaType.APPLICATION_XML )
@Produces( MediaType.APPLICATION_XML )
public class HpcService{

    public HPCInfo hpcInfo;
    public HPCResponse hpcResponse;

    @POST
    @Path( "/analyze" )
    public HPCResponse startAnalysing(HPCInfo _hpcInfo){

        System.out.println( "Started Analyzing..." );

        hpcInfo = _hpcInfo;
        hpcInfo.getImagePath();        

        hpcResponse = new HPCResponse();
        ImageProgress iProg = new ImageProgress(hpcInfo.getImagePath());
        hpcResponse.setImgProgress(iProg);

        System.out.println("Returning response...");
        return hpcResponse;
    }
}

HPCInfo class is also at both client and server. HPCInfo class:

    @XmlRootElement
    public class HPCInfo
    {
        private String imagePath = "";

        public String getImagePath(){
            return imagePath;
        }

        public void setImagePath( String imagePath ){
            this.imagePath = imagePath;
        }
    }

And finally its my client calling for the HPCService.

public class TestClient {
    private static String webServiceURI = "http://localhost:8080/TestServer123";
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String input = "ABNKidney.scn";
        ClientConfig clientConfig = new ClientConfig();
        Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient(clientConfig);
        URI serviceURI = UriBuilder.fromUri(webServiceURI).build();

        WebTarget webTarget = client.target(serviceURI);

        HPCInfo info = new HPCInfo();
        info.setImagePath(input);

        webTarget = webTarget.path("test").path("hpc").path("analyze");

        HPCResponse hResponse = webTarget.request().accept(MediaType.APPLICATION_XML).post(Entity.entity(info, MediaType.APPLICATION_XML), HPCResponse.class);
    }
}

This is the full error description I am getting:

javax.ws.rs.InternalServerErrorException: HTTP 500 Internal Server Error
    at org.glassfish.jersey.client.JerseyInvocation.convertToException(JerseyInvocation.java:968)
    at org.glassfish.jersey.client.JerseyInvocation.translate(JerseyInvocation.java:795)
    at org.glassfish.jersey.client.JerseyInvocation.access$500(JerseyInvocation.java:91)
    at org.glassfish.jersey.client.JerseyInvocation$2.call(JerseyInvocation.java:683)
    at org.glassfish.jersey.internal.Errors.process(Errors.java:315)
    at org.glassfish.jersey.internal.Errors.process(Errors.java:297)
    at org.glassfish.jersey.internal.Errors.process(Errors.java:228)
    at org.glassfish.jersey.process.internal.RequestScope.runInScope(RequestScope.java:424)
    at org.glassfish.jersey.client.JerseyInvocation.invoke(JerseyInvocation.java:679)
    at org.glassfish.jersey.client.JerseyInvocation$Builder.method(JerseyInvocation.java:435)
    at org.glassfish.jersey.client.JerseyInvocation$Builder.post(JerseyInvocation.java:338)
    at com.TestClient.main(TestClient.java:34)

Answer 1

One way to debug things like this is to create a simple ExceptionMapper to catch exceptions that are not mapped. When there is no mapper, often the exception will bubble up to the container level, which just gives us generic 500 server error (which most of the time is of little help).

@Provider
public class DebugExceptionMapper implements ExceptionMapper<Exception> {

    @Override
    public Response toResponse(Exception exception) {
        exception.printStackTrace();
        return Response.serverError().entity(exception.getMessage()).build();
    } 
}

Then just register the mapper. When running a simple test with your ImageProgress class, when the exception is thrown, the stacktrace gets printed, and you can see the exception message

...ImageProgress does not have a no-arg default constructor

So just add a default (no-arg constructor) to the ImageProgress class. This is a requirement with JAXB models.