[Resteasy-users] What is the expected implementation of a method annotated with @Produces("application/json") in case its return type is String?

[Guilherme G. <ger...@gm...>]

Hello,

Let's say there's a method:

  @GET
  @Path("/any_path")
  @Produces("application/json")
  public String getAnyValue();

Should this implementation return a String already converted to a JSON (1)
or the conversion to JSON would be implemented automatically by Resteasy
(2)?

(1) Something along the lines of (all exceptions were omitted):

 @GET
 @Path("/any_path")
 @Produces("application/json")
 public String getAnyValue() {
    ObjectMapper codec = new ObjectMapper(); // jackson's mapper
    ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
    codec.writeValue(baos, "any value");
    return new String(baos.toByteArray());
}

(2) Something along the lines of:

  @GET
 @Path("/any_path")
 @Produces("application/json")
 public String getAnyValue() {
    return "any value"; // the magic is made by Resteasy, just like would be
made
                        // if an annotated object would be returned.
}

If approach (2) is to be ok, I run into trouble: When I create a client
using the Resteasy Client Framework, both client and server communicate
perfectly. However, if I use another client, e.g. implemented using
org.apache.commons.httpclient.HttpClient, this client is unable to parse the
response into a JSON. Also, by debugging the response, I can see that the
supposed automatic conversion from String to JSON is not working (the same
String returned is received by the client, when the correct -- I think --
would be to put it between double quotes: this is how a String is
represented in JSON, right?).

Thank you very much (and congratulations for such wonderful tool!)

-- 
Guilherme

msn: gui...@ho...
homepage: http://sites.google.com/site/germoglio/