How to return XML from a Jersey 400 response code

Question

When a client executes a POST I have to validate the String parameters for bad characters. When I find one I need to return a message to indicate what was incorrect. Normally I use a text/plain, but our customer is using some Oracle tool that must get XML back from a POST request (go figure).

I have created a custom exception to create the response:

public class RESTException extends WebApplicationException {
public RESTException(Response.Status status, String messageKey) {
    super(Response.status(status).entity("a messasge").type(MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN).build());
}
public RESTException(Response.Status status, String messageKey, boolean useEntity) {
    super(Response.status(status).entity(new CDSResponse(Integer.toString(status.getStatusCode()), PropertyFileAccessor.getInstance().getPropertyWithDefault(messageKey))).type(MediaType.APPLICATION_XML).build());
}

Usually I execute the first method above when creating an error, but I crafted the second method with the entity to return the XML.

Here is the method that I use as the endpoing:

@POST
@Consumes({"application/assetId-v1+xml", "application/assetId-v1+json"})
@Produces({MediaType.APPLICATION_XML})
@Path("/{dealerCode}/{dcn}/{make}/{serialNumber}")
public Response postV1(AssetId assetId, @PathParam("dealerCode") String dealerCode, @PathParam("dcn") String dcn, @PathParam("make") String make, @PathParam("serialNumber") String serialNumber) {
    if (!StringUtils.isAlphanumeric(dealerCode)) {
        throw new RESTException(Status.BAD_REQUEST, "equipmentdata.400.invalid.dealer.code", true);
    }

Here is the question/Bug: When I throw a 400, I get this as the response:

cat.dds.cds.model.CDSResponse@29626a

But when I throw any other status code I get xml. What's up?

Answer 1

My solution was simple. Don't send back 400s. In this particular case, the Oracle tool would only accept 200s, so it was not very restful. So everything is a 200 and the response XML had the real code in it.