Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 415 (Unsupported Media Type) in Java RESTful web service call

Question

I have the following javascript in my test html page to send ajax requests to a java restful web service I built with netbeans (mostly auto generated by using 'Restful web services from database' function). Here is the ajax query from my test html page:

$(function(){
$('.message-button').on('click', function(e){

    var resultDiv = $("#resultDivContainer");

      $.ajax({
                    headers: { 'Accept': 'application/json',
                        'Content-Type': 'application/json' 
                    },
                    'type': 'POST',
                    'url':  'http://localhost:8080/xxxAPI/api/activity',
                    'data': { "baseItemId": "2" },
                    'dataType':'json',
                    'success': function(data) {
                        var xmlstr = data.xml ? data.xml : (new XMLSerializer()).serializeToString(data);
                        $("#resultDivContainer").text(xmlstr);
                    },
                    'error': function(jqXHR, textStatus, errorThrown) {
                        alert(' Error in processing! '+textStatus + 'error: ' + errorThrown);
                    }
                });
})
});

Also here is the part of my java code that accepts post requests:

@POST
    @Override
    @Consumes({MediaType.APPLICATION_XML, MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON})
    public void create(XxxxxActivity entity) {
        super.create(entity);
       }

When I request from the test page (for this version of the test page), I get this error:

Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 415 (Unsupported Media Type)

or this error:

POST http://localhost:8080/xxxAPI/api/activity 415 (Unsupported Media Type)

So far I have tried making various changes to the ajax request as advised on similar questions on stackoverflow, including changing type to jsonp, putting json data in double quotes, adding headers and changing data type to xml. None of them have worked.

Also since I manage to get a response from the server at times, I wonder if the issue is with xml parsing in the java code. I believe a potential fix would be to add the jackson jar files, but I have no idea how to add them on netbeans as there is no lib folder in WEB_INF.

I would also like to know if there is any issue with the jquery ajax request. This issue has been bugging me for days.

PS: Also note that GET requests from the browser work fine. I have not used maven in this project.

Solution

Replace

'data': { "baseItemId": "2" },

with

'data': JSON.stringify({ "baseItemId": "2" }),

Object JSON is available here.

EDIT

• add attribute contentType: 'application/json; charset=UTF-8'
• remove attribute headers from ajax call.