java - no suitable HttpMessageConverter found for response type

Question

Using spring, with this code :

List<HttpMessageConverter<?>> messageConverters = restTemplate.getMessageConverters();
for(HttpMessageConverter httpMessageConverter : messageConverters){
  System.out.println(httpMessageConverter);
}
ResponseEntity<ProductList> productList = restTemplate.getForEntity(productDataUrl,ProductList.class);

I get

org.springframework.http.converter.ByteArrayHttpMessageConverter@34649ee4
org.springframework.http.converter.StringHttpMessageConverter@39fba59b
org.springframework.http.converter.ResourceHttpMessageConverter@383580da
org.springframework.http.converter.xml.SourceHttpMessageConverter@409e850a
org.springframework.http.converter.support.AllEncompassingFormHttpMessageConverter@673074aa
org.springframework.http.converter.xml.Jaxb2RootElementHttpMessageConverter@1e3b79d3
org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter@52bb1b26

org.springframework.web.client.RestClientException: Could not extract response: no suitable HttpMessageConverter found for response type [class com.mycopmany.ProductList] and content type [text/html;charset=UTF-8]

The a snippet of the pojo :

@XmlRootElement(name="TheProductList")
public class ProductList {

@XmlElement(required = true, name = "date")
private LocalDate importDate;

Answer 1

From a Spring point of view, none of the HttpMessageConverter instances registered with the RestTemplate can convert text/html content to a ProductList object. The method of interest is HttpMessageConverter#canRead(Class, MediaType). The implementation for all of the above returns false, including Jaxb2RootElementHttpMessageConverter.

Since no HttpMessageConverter can read your HTTP response, processing fails with an exception.

If you can control the server response, modify it to set the Content-type to application/xml, text/xml, or something matching application/*+xml.

If you don't control the server response, you'll need to write and register your own HttpMessageConverter (which can extend the Spring classes, see AbstractXmlHttpMessageConverter and its sub classes) that can read and convert text/html.