Spring/Eureka/Feign - FeignClient setting Content-Type header to application/x-www-form-urlencoded - spring-boot

Question

When I use a FeignClient it is setting the Content-Type to application/x-www-form-urlencoded instead of application/json;charset=UTF-8.
If I use a RestTemplate to send the same message the message header Content-Type is correctly set to application/json;charset=UTF-8.
Both the FeignClient and RestTemplate are using Eureka for service discovery, and I discovered this problem by debugging the HTTP message received by the server.
The controller on the server side looks like this:
#RestController
#RequestMapping("/site/alarm")
public class SiteAlarmController {
#RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST)
#ResponseBody
public ResponseEntity<RaiseAlarmResponseDto> raiseAlarm(#RequestBody RaiseSiteAlarmRequestDto requestDto) {
...
}
My FeignClient interface in the service that calls the alarm looks like this:
#FeignClient("alarm-service")
public interface AlarmFeignService {
#RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST, value = "/site/alarm")
RaiseAlarmResponseDto raiseAlarm(#RequestBody RaiseSiteAlarmRequestDto requestDto);
}
The HTTP message headers from the FeignClient are:
Accept: */*
Cache-Control: no-cache
Pragma: no-cache
User-Agent: Java/1.7.0_60
Host: smit005s-MacBook-Pro.local:9120
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 323
The alarm service doesn't like the Content-Type and throws the following exception:
2015-04-22 12:12:28.580 thread="qtp1774842986-25" class="org.eclipse.jetty.servlet.ServletHandler" level="WARN"
org.springframework.web.util.NestedServletException: Request processing failed; nested exception is feign.FeignException: status 415 reading AlarmFeignService#raiseAlarm(RaiseSiteAlarmRequestDto); content:
{"timestamp":1429701148576,"status":415,"error":"Unsupported Media Type","exception":"org.springframework.web.HttpMediaTypeNotSupportedException","message":"Unsupported Media Type","path":"/site/alarm"}
at org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.processRequest(FrameworkServlet.java:978) ~[spring-webmvc-4.1.5.RELEASE.jar:4.1.5.RELEASE]
at org.springframework.web.servlet.FrameworkServlet.doGet(FrameworkServlet.java:857) ~[spring-webmvc-4.1.5.RELEASE.jar:4.1.5.RELEASE]
at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:618) ~[tomcat-embed-core-8.0.20.jar:8.0.20]
...
... /* commented rest of stack out */
...
If I change the client side code to use a RestTemplate as follows:
#Service
public class AlarmService {
#Autowired
private RestTemplate restTemplate;
...
public void send(RaiseSiteAlarmRequestDto alarm) {
RaiseAlarmResponseDto result = restTemplate.postForObject("http://alarm-service/site/alarm",
raiseSiteAlarmRequestDto, RaiseAlarmResponseDto.class);
}
}
It works with the RestTemplate, the alarm-service receives the message and processes it successfully. The message headers sent by the RestTemplate are:
Accept: application/json, application/*+json
Content-Type: application/json;charset=UTF-8
Cache-Control: no-cache
Pragma: no-cache
User-Agent: Java/1.7.0_60
Host: smit005s-MacBook-Pro.local:9120
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Length: 323

Answer 1

The answer was to do as #spencergibb suggests; use the consumes directive in the #RequestMapping annotation on the FeignClient interface. This Spring/Netflix documentaition also has an example.
So for example the #FeignClient interface declaration in the client is now:
#FeignClient("alarm-service")
public interface AlarmFeignService {
#RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.POST, value = "/site/alarm", consumes = "application/json"))
RaiseAlarmResponseDto raiseAlarm(RaiseSiteAlarmRequestDto requestDto);
}
Note this is only necessary on the client side and the server side controller does not need to have this change.
Would be nice if this was done by default on the #FeignClient and then it would be the consistent with RestTemplate and the server side controller #RequestMapping annotation. Maybe that can be done in a future release of spring-cloud.