how to serialize multi-level json using jackson in spring? - spring

Question

This is the response body that is expected out the endpoint /foo/bar.
As you can see, this is nested json and hence for each level do I require a Java object. what is the efficient way to construct this?. I am using Spring 4.1 which in turn uses Jackson to serialize POJOs.
{
"user": {
"status": {
"state": "active",
"message": [
"registered on 01.10.2015"
]
}
},
"features": {
"xbox": {
"state": "enabled",
"message": [
"foo",
"bar"
]
},
"playstation": {
"state": "disabled",
"message": [
"hello ",
"world"
]
}
}
}
Here is something I have thought
#RequestMapping("foo/bar")
#ResponseBody
public Result getData(long id){
Result result = getUserData(id);
return result;
}
public class Result {
private User user;
private List<Feature> features;
//getters and setters
}
public class Status {
private State state;
private Message messages;
//getters and setteers
}
public class State {
private String state;
//getters and setters
}
public class Message {
private List<String> messages;
//getters and setters
}
Similarly for "features" node, I will construct Java POJO for each level of Json object. I am aware of using objectMapper and JsonNode but wondering if it is possible to effectively construct nested json using java objects.

Answer 1

Classes like State could be an enum, if you know for sure there will only be a limited domain of values. And Message shouldn't be a separate class- just embed List<String> message directly in Status.
If you want a more compact representation, you can always provide your own serializer/deserializer classes to customise the translation.