Testing Spring's @RequestBody using Spring MockMVC

Question

I am trying to test a method that posts an object to the database using Spring's MockMVC framework. I've constructed the test as follows:

@Test
public void testInsertObject() throws Exception { 

    String url = BASE_URL + "/object";

    ObjectBean anObject = new ObjectBean();
    anObject.setObjectId("33");
    anObject.setUserId("4268321");
    //... more

    Gson gson = new Gson();
    String json = gson.toJson(anObject);

    MvcResult result = this.mockMvc.perform(
            post(url)
            .contentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
            .content(json))
            .andExpect(status().isOk())
            .andReturn();
}

The method I'm testing uses Spring's @RequestBody to receive the ObjectBean, but the test always returns a 400 error.

@ResponseBody
@RequestMapping(    consumes="application/json",
                    produces="application/json",
                    method=RequestMethod.POST,
                    value="/object")
public ObjectResponse insertObject(@RequestBody ObjectBean bean){

    this.photonetService.insertObject(bean);

    ObjectResponse response = new ObjectResponse();
    response.setObject(bean);

    return response;
}

The json created by gson in the test:

{
   "objectId":"33",
   "userId":"4268321",
   //... many more
}

The ObjectBean class

public class ObjectBean {

private String objectId;
private String userId;
//... many more

public String getObjectId() {
    return objectId;
}

public void setObjectId(String objectId) {
    this.objectId = objectId;
}

public String getUserId() {
    return userId;
}

public void setUserId(String userId) {
    this.userId = userId;
}
//... many more
}

So my question is: how to I test this method using Spring MockMVC?

Answer 1

Use this one

public static final MediaType APPLICATION_JSON_UTF8 = new MediaType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON.getType(), MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON.getSubtype(), Charset.forName("utf8"));

@Test
public void testInsertObject() throws Exception { 
    String url = BASE_URL + "/object";
    ObjectBean anObject = new ObjectBean();
    anObject.setObjectId("33");
    anObject.setUserId("4268321");
    //... more
    ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
    mapper.configure(SerializationFeature.WRAP_ROOT_VALUE, false);
    ObjectWriter ow = mapper.writer().withDefaultPrettyPrinter();
    String requestJson=ow.writeValueAsString(anObject );

    mockMvc.perform(post(url).contentType(APPLICATION_JSON_UTF8)
        .content(requestJson))
        .andExpect(status().isOk());
}

As described in the comments, this works because the object is converted to json and passed as the request body. Additionally, the contentType is defined as Json (APPLICATION_JSON_UTF8).

More info on the HTTP request body structure