Content type 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded;charset=UTF-8' not supported for @RequestBody MultiValueMap

The problem is that when we use application/x-www-form-urlencoded, Spring doesn't understand it as a RequestBody. So, if we want to use this we must remove the @RequestBody annotation.

Then try the following:

@RequestMapping(value = "/{email}/authenticate", method = RequestMethod.POST,
        consumes = MediaType.APPLICATION_FORM_URLENCODED_VALUE, 
        produces = {MediaType.APPLICATION_ATOM_XML_VALUE, MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE})
public @ResponseBody  Representation authenticate(@PathVariable("email") String anEmailAddress, MultiValueMap paramMap) throws Exception {
   if(paramMap == null && paramMap.get("password") == null) {
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Password not provided");
    }
    return null;
}

Note that removed the annotation @RequestBody

answer: Http Post request with content type application/x-www-form-urlencoded not working in Spring

It seems that now you can just mark the method parameter with @RequestParam and it will do the job for you.

@PostMapping( "some/request/path" )
public void someControllerMethod( @RequestParam Map<String, String> body ) {
  //work with Map
}

Add a header to your request to set content type to application/json

curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -s -XPOST http://your.domain.com/ -d YOUR_JSON_BODY

this way spring knows how to parse the content.