Converting GET response from restTemplate to Custom Class

Akki :

So, I am playing with RestTemplate in a spring-boot REST API.

I have a TEST spring-boot application which makes a restTemplate call to another application EMPLOYEE-TEST. For now I have Employee model class present in both applications but a repository present only on EMPLOYEE-TEST side.

PROBLEM: So, I'm just trying to do a normal findAll() from TEST side and in return trying to get List of Employee objects, but the problem is I get the List of LinkedHashMap objects instead of Employee object.

Now, I can set member variables one by one for small class but when class has around 10 member variables and I have thousands of such class, it isn't feasible.

Here is the code.

TestController:

@RequestMapping("/test")
public class TestController {

    @Autowired
    private RestTemplate restTemplate;

    @Value("${rest.url}")
    private String url;

    @GetMapping("/")
    public ResponseEntity<Object> findEmployees(){
        String response = restTemplate.getForObject(this.url, String.class);
        System.out.println("response is \n"+response);

        List<Employee> list_response = restTemplate.getForObject(this.url, List.class);
        System.out.println(list_response);
        for(Object e : list_response) {
            System.out.println(e.getClass());
        }
        return new ResponseEntity (restTemplate.getForEntity(this.url, Object[].class), HttpStatus.OK);
    }
}

url = http://localhost:8080/employee/ in application.properties

EmployeeController:

@RequestMapping("/employee")
public class EmployeeController {

    @Autowired
    private EmployeeRepository eRepository;


    @GetMapping("/")
    public ResponseEntity<Employee> findAll(){
        return new ResponseEntity ( eRepository.findAll(), HttpStatus.OK);
    }
}

Output:

response is
[{"id":1,"name":"Rahul","salary":10000},{"id":2,"name":"Rohit","salary":20000},{"id":3,"name":"Akash","salary":15000},{"id":4,"name":"Priya","salary":5000},{"id":5,"name":"Abhinav","salary":13000}]
[{id=1, name=Rahul, salary=10000}, {id=2, name=Rohit, salary=20000}, {id=3, name=Akash, salary=15000}, {id=4, name=Priya, salary=5000}, {id=5, name=Abhinav, salary=13000}]
class java.util.LinkedHashMap
class java.util.LinkedHashMap
class java.util.LinkedHashMap
class java.util.LinkedHashMap
class java.util.LinkedHashMap

So, first line in output prints response stored in string and second one is printing list_response variable.

Now, my requirement is to have List of Employee objects instead of LinkedHashMap objects.

Let me know if anything required from my end.

David :

Use ParameterizedTypeReference

 RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate();
    ResponseEntity<List<Employee>> response = restTemplate.exchange(
      "http://localhost:8080/employees/",
      HttpMethod.GET,
      null,
      new ParameterizedTypeReference<List<Employee>>(){});
      List<Employee> employees = response.getBody();

https://www.baeldung.com/spring-rest-template-list