Here’s the solution to an obscure error that I couldn’t find an existing explanation for. When using a @MultipartForm parameter on a RestEasy JAX-RS endpoint, for example …

public class TestForm {

    @FormParam("id")
    @PartType("text/plain")
    private String id;

    public TestForm(String id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

    public String getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public void setId(String id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

}

… I was receiving this error any time I submitted a form to that endpoint:

JBWEB000065: HTTP Status 400 -

JBWEB000309: type JBWEB000067: Status report

JBWEB000068: message

JBWEB000069: description JBWEB000120: The request sent by the client was syntactically incorrect.

JBoss Web/7.4.8.Final-redhat-4

The JBoss server logs were no more enlightening, leaving only this as a clue:

18:22:36,686 WARN  [org.jboss.resteasy.core.SynchronousDispatcher] (http-/0.0.0.0:8080-5) Failed executing POST /AudioMessages: org.jboss.resteasy.spi.ReaderException
	at org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.providers.multipart.MultipartFormAnnotationReader.readFrom(MultipartFormAnnotationReader.java:64) [resteasy-multipart-provider-2.3.8.Final-redhat-3.jar:]
	at org.jboss.resteasy.core.interception.MessageBodyReaderContextImpl.proceed(MessageBodyReaderContextImpl.java:106) [resteasy-jaxrs-2.3.8.Final-redhat-3.jar:]
	at org.jboss.resteasy.plugins.interceptors.encoding.GZIPDecodingInterceptor.read(GZIPDecodingInterceptor.java:63) [resteasy-jaxrs-2.3.8.Final-redhat-3.jar:]
	at org.jboss.resteasy.core.interception.MessageBodyReaderContextImpl.proceed(MessageBodyReaderContextImpl.java:109) [resteasy-jaxrs-2.3.8.Final-redhat-3.jar:]

Looking at the source code for that class and line-number (MultipartFormAnnotationReader.java:64) led to this:

...
58       try
59       {
60          obj = type.newInstance();
61       }
62       catch (InstantiationException e)
63       {
64          throw new ReaderException(e.getCause());
65       }
...

It should have been obvious at this point, but it wasn’t until I stopped thinking about it and my subconscious brain took over that I realised what was happening. I must have introduced a constructor to my @MultipartForm pojo and inadvertently removed the default constructor, causing line 64 above to fail.

Sure enough, revision history confirmed the change and the solution was simple. Add a default constructor to the TestForm class to solve the issue:

public class TestForm {

    @FormParam("id")
    @PartType("text/plain")
    private String id;

    public TestForm() {
    }

    ...
}

Ironically I added the constructor for the purpose of integration testing, which didn’t seem to pick up the error it introduced.