adam bien's blog

HTML Body for Non-200 JAX-RS Responses on Payara Server 📎

Payara generates for all client errors (400–499) and server errors (500–599) a default HTML body for "bodyless" responses like:


@Path("ping")
public class PingResource {    

    @GET
    @Path("bodyless")
    @Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
    public Response bodyless() {
        return Response.
                status(412).
                 build();
    }    
}

The following command:

curl -i localhost:8080/jaxrs-non200-with-json/resources/ping/bodyless

...generates a reponse with a default HTML body including the error message in a human-readable format:


HTTP/1.1 412 Precondition Failed
Server: Payara Server  5.194 #badassfish
(...)

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" 
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
(...)

An "erroneous" HTTP response with body:


@GET
@Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
public Response ping() {
    JsonObject result = Json.createObjectBuilder().
            add("hey", "joe").
            build();
    return Response.status(412).
            entity(result).
            build();
}

...requested with curl -i localhost:8080/jaxrs-non200-with-json/resources/ping

Arrives as expected:


HTTP/1.1 412 Precondition Failed
Server: Payara Server  5.194 #badassfish
(...)

{"hey":"joe"}

The behaviour described in this post was discussed during the 72nd airhacks.tv episode.