The @javax.ws.rs.Consumes annotation defines the internet media type(s) that the resource class methods can accept. You can define the @Consumes annotation either at the class level (which will get defaulted for all methods) or at the method level. The method-level annotations override the class-level annotations. The possible internet media types that a REST API can consume are as follows:

• application/atom+xml
• application/json
• application/octet-stream
• application/svg+xml
• application/xhtml+xml
• application/xml
• text/html
• text/plain
• text/xml
• multipart/form-data
• application/x-www-form-urlencoded

The following example illustrates how you can use the @Consumes attribute to designate a method in a class to consume a payload presented in the JSON media type. The binding provider will copy the JSON representation of an input message to the Department parameter of the createDepartment() method:

import javax.ws.rs.Consumes;  
import javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType; 
import javax.ws.rs.POST; 
 
@POST 
@Consumes(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON) 
public void createDepartment(Department entity) { 
  //Method implementation goes here... 
}