Trying to use Spring Boot REST to Read JSON String from POST

To receive arbitrary Json in Spring-Boot, you can simply use Jackson's JsonNode. The appropriate converter is automatically configured.

    @PostMapping(value="/process")
    public void process(@RequestBody com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.JsonNode payload) {
        System.out.println(payload);
    }

To further work with array of maps, the followings could help:

@RequestMapping(value = "/process", method = RequestMethod.POST, headers = "Accept=application/json")
public void setLead(@RequestBody Collection<? extends Map<String, Object>> payload) throws Exception {

  List<Map<String,Object>> maps = new ArrayList<Map<String,Object>>();
  maps.addAll(payload);

}

I think the simplest/handy way to consuming JSON is using a Java class that resembles your JSON: https://stackoverflow.com/a/6019761

But if you can't use a Java class you can use one of these two solutions.

Solution 1: you can do it receiving a Map<String, Object> from your controller:

@RequestMapping(
    value = "/process", 
    method = RequestMethod.POST)
public void process(@RequestBody Map<String, Object> payload) 
    throws Exception {

  System.out.println(payload);

}

Using your request:

curl -H "Accept: application/json" -H "Content-type: application/json" \
-X POST -d '{"name":"value"}' http://localhost:8080/myservice/process

---

Solution 2: otherwise you can get the POST payload as a String:

@RequestMapping(
    value = "/process", 
    method = RequestMethod.POST,
    consumes = "text/plain")
public void process(@RequestBody String payload) throws Exception {

  System.out.println(payload);

}

Then parse the string as you want. Note that must be specified consumes = "text/plain" on your controller. In this case you must change your request with Content-type: text/plain:

curl -H "Accept: application/json" -H "Content-type: text/plain" -X POST \
-d '{"name":"value"}' http://localhost:8080/myservice/process

To add on to Andrea's solution, if you are passing an array of JSONs for instance

[
    {"name":"value"},
    {"name":"value2"}
]

Then you will need to set up the Spring Boot Controller like so:

@RequestMapping(
    value = "/process", 
    method = RequestMethod.POST)
public void process(@RequestBody Map<String, Object>[] payload) 
    throws Exception {

    System.out.println(payload);

}