Can't perform PATCH update of an entity referring a child related element with its Hal URL in Native context

[mathieupedreropro]

Hi Spring Hateoas team !

I think I found a bug (I initially created an issue on spring-boot project, by I was told by mhalbritter this is most likely to be an issue for hateoas.

I'm working with Spring-boot 3.0.0, that (through spring dependecy-management) pulls spring-hateoas 2.0.0 in my project. I work in a native context (builder paketobuildpacks/builder:tiny, 'BP_NATIVE_IMAGE': 'true' in my gradle bootBuildImage task)

In a very simple context, when compiling with spring boot native, I can't perform a patch 'for example) update of my entity reffering a child entity with its url identifier.

When I perform a PATH request with a body like this one:

{
  "shouldBeChecked": true,
  "name": "Amical6",
  "parent": null,
  "authority": "https://myurl/api/authorities/e52cdfb6-6f3c-4552-8ea4-e1357b5d052c"
}

I get the following errors :

in the web navigator (running the client app):

{"cause":{"cause":null,"message":"Cannot construct instance of `org.[xxx].Authority` (although at least one Creator exists): no String-argument constructor/factory method to deserialize from String value ('https://myurl/api/authorities/e52cdfb6-6f3c-4552-8ea4-e1357b5d052c')\n at [Source: UNKNOWN; byte offset: #UNKNOWN] (through reference chain: org.[xxx].MyObject[\"authority\"])"},"message":"Could not read payload"}

And, in my application logs :

Failed to evaluate Jackson deserialization for type [[simple type, class org.springframework.data.rest.webmvc.PersistentEntityResource]]: java.lang.NullPointerException

While, in the meantime, when run my project in a non native context (for example in my favourite IDE), I've got no problem at all.

Please find below:

• the Stack overflow discussion (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/74573299/how-to-deserialize-json-object-referring-related-data-using-hal-links-with-jacks?noredirect=1)
• A reproducer project (how-to reproduce is described in the readme) (https://github.com/mathieupedreropro/spring-hal-jackson-graalvm).
• the inital issue I submitted to spring boot project (Can't perform PATCH update of an entity referring a child related element with its Hal URL in Native context spring-boot#33468)

Thanks a lot !

[mathieupedreropro]

Hi,

After debugging myself this issue, I guess this is more likely to be related to spring data rest project. I keep the issue open here to let spring hateoas team have a look to it and confirm my guess.

Best regards,

[odrotbohm]

PersistentEntityResource indeed indicates that this is coming from Spring Data REST. Going forward, please avoid creating the ticket multiple times. If we find out the issue actually has to be solved in a different project, we can move tickets. That causes less effort than having different teams re-evaluating stuff multiple times in their inboxes. Thanks!