populating required fields only in the response of spring rest API - spring

Question

I am using Spring to build sample rest web service.
This is my RequestMapping:
#RequestMapping(value ="/employees", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public Response getAllEmployees(#Context HttpServletRequest request) {
List<Employee> employees = null;
try {
employees = repository.findAll();
}catch(Throwable e) {
RestServiceException rsException = new RestServiceException();
rsException.setStatus(HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR);
throw rsException;
}
return Response.ok(employees, MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON).build();
}
When I am using this, response is populated as below:
{
"context": {
"headers": {
"Content-Type": [
{
"type": "application",
"subtype": "json",
"parameters": {},
"wildcardType": false,
"wildcardSubtype": false
}
]
},
"configuration": null,
"entity": [
{
"id": 1,
"name": "Bilbo Baggins",
"role": "burglar"
},
{
"id": 2,
"name": "Frodo Baggins",
"role": "thief"
}
],
"entityType": "java.util.ArrayList",
"entityAnnotations": [],
"entityStream": {
"closed": false,
"committed": false
},
"length": -1,
"language": null,
"location": null,
"date": null,
"lastModified": null,
"mediaType": {
"type": "application",
"subtype": "json",
"parameters": {},
"wildcardType": false,
"wildcardSubtype": false
},
"entityClass": "java.util.ArrayList",
"lengthLong": -1,
"allowedMethods": [],
"acceptableMediaTypes": [
{
"type": "*",
"subtype": "*",
"parameters": {},
"quality": 1000,
"wildcardType": true,
"wildcardSubtype": true
}
],
"committed": false,
"requestCookies": {},
"acceptableLanguages": [
"*"
],
"responseCookies": {},
"stringHeaders": {
"Content-Type": [
"application/json"
]
},
"entityTag": null,
"links": []
},
"status": 200,
"length": -1,
"language": null,
"location": null,
"date": null,
"lastModified": null,
"mediaType": {
"type": "application",
"subtype": "json",
"parameters": {},
"wildcardType": false,
"wildcardSubtype": false
},
"metadata": {
"Content-Type": [
{
"type": "application",
"subtype": "json",
"parameters": {},
"wildcardType": false,
"wildcardSubtype": false
}
]
},
"allowedMethods": [],
"statusInfo": "OK",
"cookies": {},
"stringHeaders": {
"Content-Type": [
"application/json"
]
},
"entityTag": null,
"entity": [
{
"id": 1,
"name": "Bilbo Baggins",
"role": "burglar"
},
{
"id": 2,
"name": "Frodo Baggins",
"role": "thief"
}
],
"links": [],
"headers": {
"Content-Type": [
{
"type": "application",
"subtype": "json",
"parameters": {},
"wildcardType": false,
"wildcardSubtype": false
}
]
}
}
But I want response to be populated as below:
[
{
"id": 1,
"name": "Bilbo Baggins",
"role": "burglar"
},
{
"id": 2,
"name": "Frodo Baggins",
"role": "thief"
}
]
Note : I don't want to change the return type of the method to List.(I want the return type as Response(javax.ws.rs.core.Response) object only).
Is there anyway to populate only the Employee_List in the response.

Answer 1

You are trying to use both JAX-RS and Spring MVC, I guess. With the Response, Spring MVC doesn't recognize the response entity and it serializes the object similar to other objects. If you are using Spring MVC, you want to be using ResponseEntity. You can refer to the below code snippet.
Change the method to return ResponseEntity rather.
#RequestMapping(value ="/employees", method = RequestMethod.GET)
public ResponseEntity getAllEmployees(#Context HttpServletRequest request) {
List<Employee> employees = null;
try {
employees = repository.findAll();
}catch(Throwable e) {
RestServiceException rsException = new RestServiceException();
rsException.setStatus(HttpStatus.INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR);
throw rsException;
}
return ResponseEntity.ok(employees);
}