CXF as Rest Client

In this blog I am going to talk about Java client for Rest Services. Here we will take CXF implementation and go through various ways of invoking Rest Services.

Following are various options for creating CXF client 

•  Injecting proxies
• Proxy-based API
• Web Clients

Injecting proxies

 CXF has deepest integration with Spring.Here the client Id will work exactly like

 Bean and when you use the bean definition form  bean factory It will work as It 

is getting called from the same location.
 

<jaxrs:client id="restClient"

         address="http://localhost:${bookstore.restlocation.url}/services/bookservice/get"

         serviceClass="com.bookstore.client.BookStoreInterface"

         inheritHeaders="true">

         <jaxrs:headers>

             <entry key="Accept" value="text/xml"/>

         </jaxrs:headers>

  </jaxrs:client> 

  Proxy-based API

BookStore store = JAXRSClientFactory.create("http://bookstore.com", BookStore.class);

//Customization

 WebClient.client(proxy).accept("text/xml");

 // (1) remote GET call to http://bookstore.com/bookstore

Books books = store.getAllBooks();

// (2) no remote call

BookResource subresource = store.getBookSubresource(1);

// {3} remote GET call to http://bookstore.com/bookstore/1

Book b = subresource.getBook();

proxies to Web Clients 

BookStore proxy = JAXRSClientFactory.create("http://books", BookStore.class);

Client client = WebClient.client(proxy);

WebClient httpClient = WebClient.fromClient(client);

Web Clients

WebClient client = WebClient.create("http://books");

Book book = client.path("bookstore/books").accept("text/xml").get(Book.class);

WebClient client = WebClient.create("http://books");

client.path("bookstore/books");

client.type("text/xml").accept("text/xml")

Response r = client.post(new Book());

Book b = r.readEntity(Book.class);

 Configuring HTTP clients in Spring

<bean id="myWebClient" class="org.apache.cxf.jaxrs.client.WebClient" 

factory-method="create"> 

        <constructor-arg type="java.lang.String" 

value="http://some.base.url.that.responds/" /> 

        <constructor-arg ref="webClientProviders" /> 

</bean> 

 In the next Blog for CXF will discuss the advanced topics like asynchronous call, thread safety and other things.

For more detailed Information refer to  CXF project documentation on http://cxf.apache.org/docs/jax-rs-client-api.html