Why does RestTemplate not bind response representation to PagedResources?

As you've discovered correctly, PagedResources does not have an _embedded property, that's why you don't get the content property populated.

This dilemma can be solved in two different ways:

1. Providing a type that matches the representation in the first place. Thus, craft a custom class and either stick to the property names of the representation or customize it using Jackson annotations etc.

2. Set up a custom MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter and customize the ObjectMapperto get the Jackson2HalModule configured that Spring HATEOAS ships out of the box.

   ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
   mapper.configure(DeserializationFeature.FAIL_ON_UNKNOWN_PROPERTIES, false);
   mapper.registerModule(new Jackson2HalModule());
   
   MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter converter = new MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter();
   converter.setSupportedMediaTypes(MediaType.parseMediaTypes("application/hal+json"));
   converter.setObjectMapper(mapper);
   
   RestTemplate template = new RestTemplate(Collections.<HttpMessageConverter<?>> singletonList(converter));