Spring WebFlux, how can I debug my WebClient POST exchange?

Question

I am having trouble understanding what I've done wrong in constructing my WebClient request. I would like to understand what the actual HTTP request looks like. (e.g., dumping the raw request to console)

POST /rest/json/send HTTP/1.1
Host: emailapi.dynect.net
Cache-Control: no-cache
Postman-Token: 93e70432-2566-7627-6e08-e2bcf8d1ffcd
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

apikey=ABC123XYZ&from=example%40example.com&to=customer1%40domain.com&to=customer2%40domain.com&to=customer3%40domain.com&subject=New+Sale+Coming+Friday&bodytext=You+will+love+this+sale.

I am using Spring5's reactive tools to build an API. I have a utility class that will send an email using Dyn's email api. I would like to use The new WebClient class to accomplish this (org.springframework.web.reactive.function.client.WebClient)

The following command has been taken from : https://help.dyn.com/email-rest-methods-api/sending-api/#postsend

curl --request POST "https://emailapi.dynect.net/rest/json/send" --data "apikey=ABC123XYZ&[email protected]&[email protected]&[email protected]&[email protected]&subject=New Sale Coming Friday&bodytext=You will love this sale."

When I make the call in curl with real values, the email sends correctly, so I feel like I am generating my request incorrectly.

My Send Command

public Mono<String> send( DynEmailOptions options )
{
    WebClient webClient = WebClient.create();
    HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
    // this line causes unsupported content type exception :(
    // headers.setContentType( MediaType.APPLICATION_FORM_URLENCODED );
    Mono<String> result = webClient.post()
        .uri( "https://emailapi.dynect.net/rest/json/send" )
        .headers( headers )
        .accept( MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON )
        .body( BodyInserters.fromObject( options ) )
        .exchange()
        .flatMap( clientResponse -> clientResponse.bodyToMono( String.class ) );
    return result;
}

My DynEmailOptions Class

import java.util.Collections;
import java.util.Set;

public class DynEmailOptions
{
    public String getApikey()
    {
        return apiKey_;
    }

    public Set<String> getTo()
    {
        return Collections.unmodifiableSet( to_ );
    }

    public String getFrom()
    {
        return from_;
    }

    public String getSubject()
    {
        return subject_;
    }

    public String getBodytext()
    {
        return bodytext_;
    }

    protected DynEmailOptions(
        String apiKey,
        Set<String> to,
        String from,
        String subject,
        String bodytext
    )
    {
        apiKey_ = apiKey;
        to_ = to;
        from_ = from;
        subject_ = subject;
        bodytext_ = bodytext;
    }

    private Set<String> to_;
    private String from_;
    private String subject_;
    private String bodytext_;
    private String apiKey_;
}

Answer 1

You're currently trying to serialize the request body "as is", without using the right BodyInserter.

In this case, I think you should turn your DynEmailOptions object into a MultiValueMap<String, String> and then:

MultiValueMap<String, String> formData = ...
Mono<String> result = webClient.post()
                .uri( "https://emailapi.dynect.net/rest/json/send" )
                .contentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_FORM_URLENCODED)
                .accept( MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON )
                .body( BodyInserters.fromFormData(formData))
                .retrieve().bodyToMono(String.class);