Get parameter sent via jquery ajax in Java Servlet [duplicate]

I had the same issue with getParameter("foo") returning null in the servlet. Found a simple solution which might be useful to people here. Use the default value

contentType='application/x-www-form-urlencoded; charset=UTF-8'

or leave it out. This will automatically encode the request with the data in parameters.

Hope this helps...

The sort answer is that this data is hidden in the request InputStream.

The following servlet is a demo of how you can use this (I am running it on a JBoss 7.1.1):

import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.UnsupportedEncodingException;
import java.net.URLDecoder;
import java.util.Enumeration;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.annotation.WebServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;

@WebServlet(name="fooServlet", urlPatterns="/foo")
public class FooServlet extends HttpServlet
{
    @Override
    protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp) throws ServletException, IOException {
        InputStream is = req.getInputStream();
        ByteArrayOutputStream os = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        byte[] buf = new byte[32];
        int r=0;
        while( r >= 0 ) {
            r = is.read(buf);
            if( r >= 0 ) os.write(buf, 0, r);
        }
        String s = new String(os.toByteArray(), "UTF-8");
        String decoded = URLDecoder.decode(s, "UTF-8");
        System.err.println(">>>>>>>>>>>>> DECODED: " + decoded);

        System.err.println("================================");

        Enumeration<String> e = req.getParameterNames();
        while( e.hasMoreElements() ) {
            String ss = (String) e.nextElement();
            System.err.println("    >>>>>>>>> " + ss);
        }

        System.err.println("================================");

        Map<String,String> map = makeQueryMap(s);
        System.err.println(map);
        //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
        //// HERE YOU CAN DO map.get("id") AND THE SENT VALUE WILL BE ////
        //// RETURNED AS EXPECTED WITH request.getParameter("id")     ////
        //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

        System.err.println("================================");

        resp.setContentType("application/json; charset=UTF-8");
        resp.getWriter().println("{'result':true}");
    }

    // Based on code from: http://www.coderanch.com/t/383310/java/java/parse-url-query-string-parameter
    private static Map<String, String> makeQueryMap(String query) throws UnsupportedEncodingException {
        String[] params = query.split("&");
        Map<String, String> map = new HashMap<String, String>();
        for( String param : params ) {
            String[] split = param.split("=");
            map.put(URLDecoder.decode(split[0], "UTF-8"), URLDecoder.decode(split[1], "UTF-8"));
        }
        return map;
    }
}

With the request:

$.post("foo",{id:5,name:"Nikos",address:{city:"Athens"}})

The output is:

>>>>>>>>>>>>> DECODED: id=5&name=Nikos&address[city]=Athens
================================
================================
{address[city]=Athens, id=5, name=Nikos}
================================

(NOTE: req.getParameterNames() does not work. The map printed in the 4th line contains all the data normally accessible using request.getParameter(). Note also the nested object notation, {address:{city:"Athens"}} → address[city]=Athens)

Slightly unrelated to your question, but for the sake of completeness:

If you want to use a server-side JSON parser, you should use JSON.stringify for the data:

$.post("foo",JSON.stringify({id:5,name:"Nikos",address:{city:"Athens"}}))

In my opinion the best way to communicate JSON with the server is using JAX-RS (or the Spring equivalent). It is dead simple on modern servers and solves these problems.