Configure Spring's MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter - spring

I am using MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter in Spring MVC to automatically serialize objects like this:
#RequestMapping(value="/*/getAccount", method=RequestMethod.GET)
#ResponseBody
public Account getAccountAction() {
Account account = accountService.getAccount();
return account;
}
Is it possible to configure which properties of the object are serialized? In my example, Account has 3 collections as properties and serializing all these contents would result in a huge object tree. Here I only want to return the flat object.
Sincerely,
Erik

Did you already try to use the Jackson Annotations?
There is the Annotation #JsonIgnoreProperties that can be used to ignore a given list of properties for serialization on class level and there is #JsonIgnore to mark properties to ignore for serialization on field level.

I could figure it out: Configure Jackson with annotatons, it is described in detail in the Jackson configuration.

Related

How to use spring-data-rest without href for relation

I'm migrating a legacy application from Spring-core 4 to Springboot 2.5.2.
The application is using spring-data-rest (SDR) alongside spring-data-mongodb to handle our entities.
The legacy code was overriding SDR configuration by extending the RepositoryRestMvcConfiguration and overriding the bean definition for persistentEntityJackson2Module to remove serializerModifier and deserializerModifier.
#EnableWebMvc
#EnableSpringDataWebSupport
#Configuration
class RepositoryConfiguration extends RepositoryRestMvcConfiguration {
...
...
#Bean
#Override
protected Module persistentEntityJackson2Module() {
// Remove existing Ser/DeserializerModifier because Spring data rest expect linked resources to be in href form. Our platform is not tailored for it yet
return ConverterHelper.configureSimpleModule((SimpleModule) super.persistentEntityJackson2Module())
.setDeserializerModifier(null)
.setSerializerModifier(null);
}
It was to avoid having to process DBRef as href link when posting entities, we pass the plain POJO instead of the href and we persist it manually before the entity.
Following the migration, there is no way to set the same overrided configuration but to avoid altering all our processes of creation we would like to keep passing the POJO even for DbRef.
I will add an exemple of what was working before :
We have the entity we want to persist :
public class EntityWithDbRefRelation {
....
#Valid
#CreateOnTheFly // Custom annotation to create the dbrefEntity before persisting the current entity
#DBRef
private MyDbRefEntity myDbRefEntity;
}
the DbRefEntity
public class MyDbRefEntity {
...
private String name;
}
and the JSON Post request we are doing:
POST base-api/entityWithDbRefRelations
{
...
"myDbRefEntity": {
"name": "My own dbRef entity"
}
}
In our database this request create our myDbRefEntity and then create the target entityWithDbRefRelation with a dbRef linked to the other entity.
Following the migration, the DBRef is never created because when deserializing the JSON into a PersistingEntity, the myDbRefEntity is ignored because it's expecting an href instead of a complex object.
I see 3 solutions :
Modify all our process to first create the DBRef through one request then create our entity with the link to the dbRef
Very costly as we have a lot of services creating entities through this backend
Compliant with SDR
Define our own rest mvc controllers to do operations, to ignore the SDR mapping machanism
Add AOP into the RepositoryRestMvcConfiguration around the persistentEntityJackson2Module to set le serializerModifier and deserializedModifier to null
I really prefer to avoid this solution as Springboot must have remove a way to configure it on purpose and it could break when migrating on newer version
Does anyone know a way to continue considering the property as a complex object instead of an href link except from my 3 previous points ?
Tell me if you need more information and thanks in advance for your help!

How to change Jackson to detect all fields in a POJO, other than only public ones?

When using Spring Boot for a project, Jackson came as default to serialize objects back and from Jsons. I realize that Jackson fails if you don't have public accessors, e.g., getters/setters, or public fields in your POJO.
The behavior is different when I switch to Gson. It detects all fields regardless of their visibility. For this reason, I ended up using Gson.
I felt a little uncomfortable about switching my POJO access rules; It would force some refactoring in the project structure.
So, no problems using Gson, but is there a way of change Jackson's behavior?
Jackson does support reading values from private member fields, but does not do it by default.
You can configure the behavior globally in the Spring Boot config like
jackson:
visibility.field: any
visibility.getter: none
visibility.setter: none
visibility.is-getter: none
(this config will only look for member fields and no longer check get, set and is methods)
You could also use the #JsonAutoDetect annotation to do the same setting for a specific class.
Try to set visibility at ObjectMapper level,
ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
mapper.setVisibility(PropertyAccessor.ALL, Visibility.NONE);
mapper.setVisibility(PropertyAccessor.FIELD, Visibility.ANY);

Is there a way to link JAX-RS resource to another resource like in Spring HATEOAS?

In Spring we've got #ExposesResourceFor annotation which can link our resource with other resources. Thanks to this our Value objects (representations) can know nothing of the actual resources.
Is there a way to do it in JAX-RS? I'm using Dropwizard with Jersey and Jackson and all I see is #InjectLinks annotation which I can use in a value object like this:
public class UserGroup {
#JsonProperty
public String name;
#InjectLinks(GroupsResource.class)
public URI myResource;
public UserGroup(String name){
this.name = name;
}
}
But unfortunatelly my Value Objects should know nothing about Resources, so I'm asking can I do such linking on the level of resources - link in spring-hateoas in controllers, as mentioned above.
With #InjectLinks, you don't have to declare the links in your model class. You can create a "wrapper" representation class, as shown in declarative-linking from the Jersey examples (though this solution is not really on the resource class level as you wish).
Another possible solution (rather than declarative linking) is to use the JAX-RS 2.0 Link class, and do the linking programmatically (with no ties to the Jersey implementation/annotations). You can either add the links to your response headers, as see here, or add Links to you model classes, as seen here (or use the wrapper class for this also, so as to not to invade your model classes)
Some Resources
Declarative Hyperlinking
Using Link for headers

Jackson deserializing custom classes in an OSGi environment

I have some trouble using Jackson 2.1 in an OSGi environment, when deserializing a class that way:
ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
User user = mapper.readValue(new File("user.json"), User.class);
class User {
public Class clazz = org.example.MyClass.class;
}
Because Jackson is in a different bundle as my custom classes I want to deserialize, I often get a java.lang.ClassNotFoundException - usually on MyClass1 or MyClass2.
I traced it back to the class com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.util.ClassUtil which uses Class.forName(..) for retrieving a class for deserializing. Because of the different class-loaders on OSGI it only sees the classes of the JRE and of Jackson but not my custom classes.
Is there a simple way to make Jackson find all the required custom classes (I have dozens of them), e.g by adding a class-loader?
As the client of Jackson you have visibility of the classes that you want to deserialize into. The trick is to pass these classes into Jackson, rather than force Jackson to use dynamic reflection to find the classes.
The Jackson documentation indicates that the method ObjectMapper.readValue can take a Class object as its parameter. If you use this method then Jackson should not need to call Class.forName(). The docs give the following example:
ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
User user = mapper.readValue(new File("user.json"), User.class);
Here, User is the domain class which is visible to your client but not to Jackson. This invocation should work fine in OSGi... if it does not then I would suggest Jackson may have a bug.

Jersey Jackson and Spring Service

We are using Jersey, Jackson and Spring service (#service) annotation to expose some REST based Web-Services. Request and response data are exchanged in JSON Format.
Below is the Service Request Object content:
public class ServiceRequest{
private RequestHeader requestHeader;
private List<BaseEntity> requestData;
}
All specific entities will extend from BaseEntity class. For example :
public class User extends BaseEntity{
private String userName;
}
For all service operation we accept only ServiceRequest Object by passing list of request data objects. Now when we try to call these operation from REST Client, these are failing with
userName is not found as part of BaseEntity.
This is because while converting, Jersey/Jackson tries to autodetect the incoming field names with the specified object's property.
I want to know is there any way, I can handle this in an intelligent way. We do not have an option to change the signature of the Service. Really appreciate your help on this.
The below link has the answer for my question. Thank you for the support.
Polymorphism in jackson annotations: #JsonTypeInfo usage
Did you tried to use generics? You can declare concrete class type at Resource's to inform Jackson to map to specific type

Resources