ContentNegotiatingViewResolver does not support wildcards in contentType [SPR-9807]

[spring-projects-issues]

Felix Barnsteiner opened SPR-9807 and commented

The following configuration won't work for accept headers containing e.g. application/vnd.foo.user+json (see also http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11880359/spring-mvc-3-1-1-contentnegotiatingviewresolver-how-to-use-wildcard-characters):

<bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.ContentNegotiatingViewResolver">
    <property name="order" value="1"/>
    <property name="favorPathExtension" value="false"/>
    <property name="defaultViews">
        <list>
            <!-- JSON View -->
            <bean class="org.springframework.web.servlet.view.json.MappingJacksonJsonView">
                <property name="contentType" value="application/*+json"/>
            </bean>                 
        </list>
    </property>
</bean>

The reason is a wrong comparison in ContentNegotiatingViewResolver#getBestView:

Current:

for (MediaType mediaType : requestedMediaTypes) {
    for (View candidateView : candidateViews) {
        if (StringUtils.hasText(candidateView.getContentType())) {
            MediaType candidateContentType = MediaType.parseMediaType(candidateView.getContentType());
            if (mediaType.includes(candidateContentType)) {
                if (logger.isDebugEnabled()) {
                    logger.debug("Returning [" + candidateView + "] based on requested media type '"
                            + mediaType + "'");
                }
                return candidateView;
            }
        }
    }
}

The problem is application/vnd.foo.user+json does not include application/*+json, the opposite is true.

Expected:

if (candidateContentType.includes(mediaType)) {

---

Affects: 3.1.2

Reference URL: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11880359/spring-mvc-3-1-1-contentnegotiatingviewresolver-how-to-use-wildcard-characters

Issue Links:

• MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter default media type should include *+json [SPR-7905] #12560 MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter default media type should include *+json

Referenced from: commits c7e7e80

[spring-projects-issues]

Felix Barnsteiner commented

I've just realized, that there is a problem with that solution: If the client requests application/vnd.foo.user+json, it gets json, but the content-type header is set to application/*+json. So there is more to do:

response.setContentType(getContentType()); 

Is not valid then. The requested content type must be computed in the views and set:

response.setContentType(getRequestedContentType()); 

Generally, I feel the behaviour of @ResponseBody and ContentNegotiatingViewResolver is a bit inconsistent.

[spring-projects-issues]

Rossen Stoyanchev commented

This should now be supported as of commit c7e7e80a3ae9f6b4ed7f2d99fe321c2e12550d7b.