Spring MVC 3.2 and JSON ObjectMapper issue

Question

I have recently upgraded my Spring version to 3.2.0 from 3.1.2. I find that that JSON properties like wrap root element, prevent null values that are defined in ObjectMapper are not working anymore.

Here is the code snippet

<mvc:annotation-driven content-negotiation-manager="contentNegotiationManager" /> 
    <bean id="contentNegotiationManager" class="org.springframework.web.accept.ContentNegotiationManagerFactoryBean">
    <property name="favorPathExtension" value="true" />
    <property name="ignoreAcceptHeader" value="false" /> 
    <property name="mediaTypes" >
        <value>
            json=application/json
            xml=application/xml
        </value>
    </property>
</bean>

and the JSON converter

<bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter">
   <property name="objectMapper" ref="customJacksonObjectMapper"/>  
   <property name="supportedMediaTypes" value="application/json"/>
</bean>

Object mapper code

public class CustomJacksonObjectMapper extends ObjectMapper {

@SuppressWarnings("deprecation")
public CustomJacksonObjectMapper() {
    super();
    final AnnotationIntrospector introspector = new JaxbAnnotationIntrospector();

    this.configure(org.codehaus.jackson.map.DeserializationConfig.Feature.UNWRAP_ROOT_VALUE, true);
    this.configure(org.codehaus.jackson.map.SerializationConfig.Feature.WRAP_ROOT_VALUE, true);

    this.configure(org.codehaus.jackson.map.SerializationConfig.Feature.WRITE_NULL_PROPERTIES, false);

    this.setDeserializationConfig(this.getDeserializationConfig().withAnnotationIntrospector(introspector));
    this.setSerializationConfig(this.getSerializationConfig().withAnnotationIntrospector(introspector));

   }
}

Jackson version

<dependency>
        <groupId>org.codehaus.jackson</groupId>
        <artifactId>jackson-xc</artifactId>
        <version>1.9.7</version>
    </dependency>

What could be the issue? Any pointers are appreciated.

Answer 1

Even though this one is an old post, I phased a similar (maybe even the same?) problem. I tracked it down to the following issue (and this might help others):

• An extra library that was added has a transient dependency on Jackson 2.x
• So far we had a dependency on Jackson 1.x
• Between Jackson 1.x and Jackson 2.x the namespace was changed to avoid conflicts
• Sprint started to pick up the newer (2.x) version
• The annotation was still to the old (1.x) version

To solve the issue I can either:

1. remove the 2.x version again
2. Upgrade the annotation to the 2.x version
3. Add an extra annotation to also cover the 2.x version

In my case I went for solution 3, since we require the two different versions and the additional annotation didn't add a big overhead.

Answer 2

Disclaimer: I could not determine why the code in question is not working, but I could reproduce the problem. This answer does provide an alternate approach that works for me.

It could be a bug, as I can reproduce the problem with both with explicit config:

<bean id="jacksonObjectMapper" class="com.demo.CustomJacksonObjectMapper"/>

<bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter">
   <property name="objectMapper" ref="jacksonObjectMapper"/>
   <property name="supportedMediaTypes" value="application/json"/>
</bean>

and via the mvc:message-converter:

<mvc:annotation-driven content-negotiation-manager="contentNegotiationManager">
    <mvc:message-converters>
        <bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter">
            <property name="objectMapper" ref="jacksonObjectMapper" />
        </bean>
   </mvc:message-converters>
</mvc:annotation-driven>

where both give me {"foo":null,"bar":"bar"} when using the example class

Demo.java

import org.springframework.stereotype.Controller;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.*;
import org.codehaus.jackson.annotate.JsonProperty;

@Controller
@RequestMapping("/data")
public class Data {
    @RequestMapping
    @ResponseBody
    public Dummy dataIndex() {
        return new Dummy();
    }

    public class Dummy {
        String foo = null;
        @JsonProperty
        public String foo() {
            return foo;
        }
        String bar = "bar";
        @JsonProperty
        public String bar() {
            return bar;
        }
    }
}

However, I would have thought the mvc:message-converter method would work, only because I have seen issues overriding the default bean registration that <mvc:annotation-driven/> performs (see Web MVC Framework) and using the nested configuration is preferred(?).

Maybe the Jackson 2 support has caused some backwards compatibility issues with Jackson 1?

However, switching to the MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter (supported in Spring 3.1.2 and Spring 3.2), I am able to alter the ObjectMapper configuration to not write null values and wrap the JSON output... but only when using the config inside the <mvc:message-converters/>!

I get {"Dummy":{"bar":"bar"}} with the following changes:

pom.xml

<dependency>
   <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
   <artifactId>jackson-core</artifactId>
   <version>2.1.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackson-databind</artifactId>
    <version>2.1.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackson-annotations</artifactId>
    <version>2.1.0</version>
</dependency>

CustomJacksonObjectMapper.java

import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.DeserializationFeature;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.SerializationFeature;
import static com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonInclude.*;

public class CustomJacksonObjectMapper extends ObjectMapper {

public CustomJacksonObjectMapper() {
    super();
    this.configure(DeserializationFeature.UNWRAP_ROOT_VALUE, true);
    this.configure(SerializationFeature.WRAP_ROOT_VALUE, true);
    this.setSerializationInclusion(Include.NON_NULL);
   }
}

Demo.java switch to new package structure for Jackson 2

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonProperty;

demo-servlet.xml

<mvc:annotation-driven content-negotiation-manager="contentNegotiationManager">
    <mvc:message-converters>
        <bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter">
            <property name="objectMapper" ref="jacksonObjectMapper" />
        </bean>
    </mvc:message-converters>
</mvc:annotation-driven>

Lastly, according to the SerializationConfig.Feature documentation, WRITE_NULL_PROPERTIES feature is deprecated < v2.0 and you should be using SerializationConfig.setSerializationInclusion() anyway. I assume this is why the @SuppressWarnings("deprecation") exists in your code. In Jackson >= v2.0, it has been removed, hence the code change in the CustomJacksonObjectMapper.java example.

Configuring ObjectMapper in Spring proposes an alternate solution.

Hope it helps!