REST Why can't we have a character as query parameter

Question

Tomcat 7.0 was failing to start for the following method definition

@GET
    @Path("/GetSeriesByIndex")
    @Produces("application/json")
    public String getSeriesListByIndex(@QueryParam("indexCharacter")char indexCharacter){
        String allSeriesByIndex = null;
        ArrayList<SeriesListDTO> seriesListing=null;
        try{
            ProjectManager projectManager = new ProjectManager();
            seriesListing = projectManager.getSeriesListByIndex(indexCharacter);
            Gson gson = new Gson();
            allSeriesByIndex = gson.toJson(seriesListing);
        }catch(Exception e){
            System.out.println(e);
        }
        return allSeriesByIndex;
    }

with the error message

com.sun.jersey.api.container.ContainerException: Method, public java.lang.String tv.series.services.webService.TV_Services.getSeriesListByIndex(char), annotated with GET of resource, class tv.series.services.webService.TV_Services, is not recognized as valid Java method annotated with @HttpMethod.

On changing the type of indexCharacter to String, the system starts and everything works fine.

can somebody explain why this happens?

I am using jersey 1.0.3 libraries. Maybe it was some bug in that release?

Thanks

Answer 1

Here is jersey's api docs: https://jersey.java.net/apidocs/2.7/jersey/javax/ws/rs/QueryParam.html

Converting a String to char? Why don't you use just String?