RESTful Web Services Developer's Guide

What Are Some of the Annotations Defined by JAX-RS?

Here is a listing of some of the Java programming annotations that are defined by JAX-RS, with a brief description of how each is used. Further information on the JAX-RS API's can be viewed at https://jsr311.dev.java.net/nonav/javadoc/index.html.

Table 3–1 Summary of Jersey Annotations

Annotation 

Description 

@Path 

The @Path annotation's value is a relative URI path indicating where the Java class will be hosted, for example, /helloworld. You can also embed variables in the URIs to make a URI path template. For example, you could ask for the name of a user, and pass it to the application as a variable in the URI, like this, /helloworld/{username}.

@GET 

The @GET annotation is a request method designator and corresponds to the similarly named HTTP method. The Java method annotated with this request method designator will process HTTP GET requests. The behavior of a resource is determined by the HTTP method to which the resource is responding.

@POST 

The @POST annotation is a request method designator and corresponds to the similarly named HTTP method. The Java method annotated with this request method designator will process HTTP POST requests. The behavior of a resource is determined by the HTTP method to which the resource is responding.

@PUT 

The @PUT annotation is a request method designator and corresponds to the similarly named HTTP method. The Java method annotated with this request method designator will process HTTP PUT requests. The behavior of a resource is determined by the HTTP method to which the resource is responding.

@DELETE 

The @DELETE annotation is a request method designator and corresponds to the similarly named HTTP method. The Java method annotated with this request method designator will process HTTP DELETE requests. The behavior of a resource is determined by the HTTP method to which the resource is responding.

@HEAD 

The @HEAD annotation is a request method designator and corresponds to the similarly named HTTP method. The Java method annotated with this request method designator will process HTTP HEAD requests. The behavior of a resource is determined by the HTTP method to which the resource is responding.

@PathParam 

The @PathParam annotation is a type of parameter that you can extract for use in your resource class. URI path parameters are extracted from the request URI, and the parameter names correspond to the URI path template variable names specified in the @Path class-level annotation.

@QueryParam 

The @QueryParam annotation is a type of parameter that you can extract for use in your resource class. Query parameters are extracted from the request URI query parameters.

@Consumes 

The @Consumes annotation is used to specify the MIME media types of representations a resource can consume that were sent by the client.

@Produces 

The @Produces annotation is used to specify the MIME media types of representations a resource can produce and send back to the client, for example, "text/plain".

@Provider 

The @Provider annotation is used for anything that is of interest to the JAX-RS runtime, such as MessageBodyReader and MessageBodyWriter. For HTTP requests, the MessageBodyReader is used to map an HTTP request entity body to method parameters. On the response side, a return value is mapped to an HTTP response entity body using a MessageBodyWriter. If the application needs to supply additional metadata, such as HTTP headers or a different status code, a method can return a Response that wraps the entity, and which can be built using Response.ResponseBuilder.