Improve adding defaults to WebClient requests [SPR-15208]

[spring-projects-issues]

Rob Winch opened SPR-15208 and commented

It would be nice if there was a more elegant way to provide defaults for a request. For example, it would be nice if we could easily change the accept to JSON. The following is pretty verbose:

WebClient webClient = WebClient.create("http://localhost:" + port)
        .filter((request, next) -> {
            ClientRequest<Void> json = ClientRequest
                    .from(request)
                    .header("Accept", MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE)
                    .build();
            return next.exchange(json);
        });

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No further details from SPR-15208

[spring-projects-issues]

Rossen Stoyanchev commented

Spring MVC Test has a "defaultRequest" feature in the MockMvc setup. I suppose this request here is in part inspired by that? Or at least is in comparison to that feature which is based on the same RequestBuilder for defining default and regular request, along with a merge of the two builder instances checking first if a request property has been set before merging it.

We now support the concept of a "base URI" in what is currently WebClientOperations. We could also allow declaring default headers and/or cookies to go with that base URI:

WebClient client = WebClient.builder()
        .baseUrl("http://localhost:"+ port)
        .defaultHeader("Accept", MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE)
        .build();

[spring-projects-issues]

Rossen Stoyanchev commented

I've updated the samples to match the latest refactoring WebClientOperations --> WebClient.