WebClient decodes string array as one string

Assume we have an endpoint that returns string array, like this (ContentType is application/json)

["a","a","a"]

and retrieve it’s response as Flux<String>

webClient.get().uri().retrieve()
.bodyToFlux(String.class)
.subscribe(s -> println(s))

In my opinion, it should print “a” for three times, but only prints ["a","a","a"]. However, there is a workaround, we can replace String.class with String[].class, but the result returned in semantic isn’t a Flux anymore, but a Mono. (The version of Spring Webflux is 5.2.3-RELEASE)

[pablo53]

Having read the maintainers’ response, I still can’t understand why is this ticket closed, and why the following: ["a","b","c"] is interpreted by WebClient as a single string. Former RestTemplate interpreted it correctly as a collection. So, Flux should correctly parse it as a Flux<String> with 3 string elements, and not one string representing JSON. WebClient would be right, if the content was like this: "[\"a\",\"b\",\"c\"]". Then I’d agree that Flux should return one string element ["a","b","c"].

[bringyou]

The workaround I mentioned is something like

webClient.get().uri().retrieve().bodyToFlux(String[].class);   // now we get a flux<String[]> which only has one item
webClient.get().uri().retrieve().bodyToMono(String[].class);  // or a mono<String[]>

then you can convert string[] to any type you like