Form URL Encoded Data

How it works

Before JSON, web forms posted their fields as application/x-www-form-urlencoded: a single body of name=value pairs joined by ampersands, with special characters percent-encoded. Many login, OAuth token and legacy endpoints still expect it. In REST Assured each field is one formParam(name, value) call, and formParams() takes a Map when you have several.

Content type matters to the server. testkru's /form endpoint rejects anything else with 415 and an error naming the type it received; posting JSON there returned exactly that. Setting the type with contentType() makes the intent explicit, but REST Assured also sets a form content type on its own when form parameters are present and you have not chosen one, and that request was accepted too. The testkru login endpoint follows the same parsing rules and accepts form-encoded credentials.

The response has two parts. received is an object that echoes your fields by name. contentType is a fixed string written into the server code, not a copy of your header, so it does not prove what you sent. The real proof is that you got a 200 rather than a 415.

About the assignment

Post two form fields to the form endpoint and print the content type it reports and the two values it received.

What you will do

1. 1Start from given(), set the content type to the form type named in the starter comment, and add name and city with one formParam() call each, using the values from the comment.
2. 2Send the request with post() to /form and keep the Response.
3. 3Read contentType, received.name and received.city with jsonPath().getString().
4. 4Print three labelled lines in the order of the expected output: Content Type:, Name: and City:.

Common mistakes

• Sending a JSON body

  Using body() with a JSON string and the JSON content type, as in earlier POST lessons, gets a 415 from this endpoint. Form endpoints need form parameters.

• Reading the fields at the root

  The echoed values sit inside received. A path of plain name returns null, so the label prints with null after it.

• Trusting the contentType field

  It is the same string on every successful response. If you want to check the request side, assert on the status code, which is where a wrong type would show up.

In a real test suite

Related lessons

• Create a User with POSTPosts a JSON body with ContentType.JSON, the format this lesson replaces.
• API Workflow - Authentication and OrderLogs in with credentials before using the token in a second call.
• Validate Content-Type with MatchersValidates the Content-Type of a response with the ContentType enum.

To try one of these calls on any API endpoint without a task, open the Online Selenium Java Compiler (REST Assured is included).

Starter code

The editor above opens with this code. Fill in the TODO lines, then run and submit it.

import io.restassured.RestAssured;
import io.restassured.response.Response;
import io.restassured.specification.RequestSpecification;
import static io.restassured.RestAssured.*;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        RestAssured.baseURI = "https://testkru.com/api";

        // TODO: POST to /form with Content-Type application/x-www-form-urlencoded
        // Use .formParam("name", "John") and .formParam("city", "New York")
        // TODO: Print contentType, received.name, and received.city from the response
    }
}