Alfresco - How to add/set content of the file while doing post using RestTemplate

Question

I am trying to upload a file to the DocLibrary folder using the below method:

private static void postTheDocument() {
        final String restENDPoint = "http://servername:8080/alfresco/api/-default-/public/alfresco/versions/1/nodes/48eea6b2-fe9b-4cd2-8270-5caa35d7e8dc/children";
        RestTemplate restTemplate = new RestTemplate();
        HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
        headers.setAccept(Arrays.asList(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON));
        headers.setBasicAuth("admin", "admin");
        String requestJson = "{\"name\": \"TestName123s.doc\",\"nodeType\": \"hr:HR_Type\",\"properties\":{\"cm:title\":\"New Test title123\",\"hr:emp_no\":\"123456\",\"hr:lname\":\"Last_Name1\",\"hr:fname\":\"First_Name1\"}}";
        HttpEntity<String> entity = new HttpEntity<String>(requestJson, headers);
        HttpEntity<String> response = restTemplate.exchange(restENDPoint, HttpMethod.POST, entity,
                String.class);
        System.out.println(response.getBody().toString());
    }

The documentation suggest this:

curl -utest:test -X POST host:port/alfresco/api/-default-/public/alfresco/versions/1/nodes/12341234-2344-2344-43243242334/children -F filedata=@test.txt

Using the method postTheDocument() creates the empty document. But when I try below request:

String requestJson = "{\"filedata\": \"@Z:/05test/YYYYest11qq890.pdf\",\"name\": \"TestName123s.doc\",\"nodeType\": \"hr:HR_Type\",\"properties\":{\"cm:title\":\"New Test title123\",\"hr:emp_no\":\"123456\",\"hr:lname\":\"Last_Name1\",\"hr:fname\":\"First_Name1\"}}";

I get the following Exception:

 Exception in thread "main" org.springframework.web.client.HttpClientErrorException$BadRequest: 400 : [{"error":{"errorKey":"Could not read content from HTTP request body: Unrecognized field \"filedata\" (class org.alfresco.rest.api.model.Node), not marked as ignorable (36 known properties: \"modifiedB... (1969 bytes)]
    

What I am doing wrong here or what I am missing?

Answer 1

I believe the common approach is to create the node in Alfresco, then send the file to the node in a multipart upload to "http://localhost:8080/alfresco/api/-default-/public/alfresco/versions/1/nodes/-root-/children" (for an example of multipart upload see: https://www.baeldung.com/httpclient-multipart-upload ).

To get the node id from the created node:

    if (response != null) {
        try {
            JSONObject result;
            result = new JSONObject(response.getBody());
            System.out.println(result.toString());
              
            JSONObject oj = result.getJSONObject("entry");
            String id = (String) oj.get("id");

            System.out.println(id);
            fileupload(file_upload,id);

        } catch (JSONException e2) {
            e2.printStackTrace();
        }

    }        

Answer 2

Posting the solution that worked for me. Its not RestTemplate based but it works. This is the solution I got from Alfresco Support folks and it works perfectly well (refer the inline comments):

private static void postFileAndMetadataToAlfresco() throws IOException, AuthenticationException {

        CloseableHttpClient httpClient = HttpClients.createDefault();
        HttpPost httpPost = new HttpPost("http://someservername:8080/alfresco/api/-default-/public/alfresco/versions/1/nodes/12341234-1234-1234-1234-123412341234/children");
        UsernamePasswordCredentials creds = new UsernamePasswordCredentials ("admin","adminpswd");
        httpPost.addHeader (new BasicScheme().authenticate(creds,httpPost, null));

        File payload = new File ("/path/to/my/file.pdf");

        MultipartEntityBuilder builder = MultipartEntityBuilder.create(); // Entity builder

        builder.addPart("filedata", new FileBody(payload)); // this is where I was struggling
        builder.addTextBody ("name", "thenamegoeshere");
        builder.addTextBody ("foo", "foo");
        builder.addTextBody ("bar", "bar");
        builder.addTextBody ("description", "descriptiongoeshere");

        builder.addTextBody ("overwrite", "true");

        HttpEntity entity = builder.build();

        httpPost.setHeader("Accept","application/json");
        httpPost.setEntity(entity);

        CloseableHttpResponse response = httpClient.execute(httpPost); // Post the request and get response

        System.out.println(response.toString()); // Response print to console

        httpClient.close();  // close the client
}