400 Bad Request when posting JSON Array to a Spring controller - rest

Question

I have been successful in sending a simple JSON object over to a spring framework Controller
curl -v -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Accept: application/json" -d '{"lastName":"Smith","firstName":"John"}' http://localhost:8080/WebServices02/aura/testJsonArray
However, when I send over a JSON object with an embedded array
curl -v -H "Content-Type: application/json" -H "Accept: application/json" -d '{"lastName":"Smith","pals":[{"name":"Billy"}],"firstName":"John"}' http://localhost:8080/WebServices02/aura/testJsonArray
I get the error 400 'The request sent by the client was syntactically incorrect ().'
My controller is
#Controller
#RequestMapping(value="/aura")
public class AuraController {
#RequestMapping(value = "/testJsonArray", method = RequestMethod.POST, headers = {"content-type=application/json"})
#ResponseBody
public void testJsonArray(#RequestBody Aura aura){
System.err.println("Called testJsonArray(): " + "Aura is " + aura.toString());
}
}
My Aura class is defined as
import java.io.Serializable;
import java.util.List;
import org.json.JSONObject;
public class Aura implements Serializable {
public class Pal{
private String name;
public String getName() {
return name;
}
public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}
}
private String firstName;
private String lastName;
public String getFirstName() {
return firstName;
}
public void setFirstName(String firstName) {
this.firstName = firstName;
}
public String getLastName() {
return lastName;
}
public void setLastName(String lastName) {
this.lastName = lastName;
}
private List<Pal> pals;
public String toString(){
return new JSONObject(this).toString();
}
public List<Pal> getPals() {
return pals;
}
public void setPals(List<Pal> pals) {
this.pals = pals;
}
}
My bean (under mvc:message-converters) is
<bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter"/>
If someone can help me on this... thanks

Answer 1

You have to include Jackson JSON Mapper dependency for jackson-core-asl and jackson-mapper-asl in your project.
This is necessary for mapping json with java pojo class fields.