[FIXED] Spring Boot: Best practice for accessing WebClient builder return values?

Issue

I have a Spring Boot backend that uses WebClient.Builder to make some third party API calls. The problem I'm having is that I don't know the common/best way to retrieve this data. I make several different API requests, but I have a general helper function makeApiRequest for handling the WebClient.Builder stuff. My code looks something like this:

@Service
public class DataScraperService{
    @Autowired
    private WebClient.Builder builder;
    private Object makeApiRequest(String apiKey, String uri){
       return builder.build()
                    .get(uri)
                    .header("API-Key", apiKey)
                    .retrieve()
                    .bodyToMono(Object.class)
                    .block();

    }
}

What is the common practice for retrieving the data from the return value of makeApiRequest()? Should I make a POJO for each different API call I'll be making and cast it to that? Or just cast everything to a LinkedHashMap? Or is there something I can do with Spring annotations for this?

Solution

The signature of your helper function shall be like this:

<T> makeApiRequest(String apiKey, String uri, Class<T> respType);

Passing respType to bodyToMono() and you'll get a respType returned.

Answered By - Simon Wong
Answer Checked By - Clifford M. (JavaFixing Volunteer)