Jackson ignore properties using the same class

Question

my question is about the fact that i want to use the same class to deserialize and re-serialize two different Jsons. I try to explain better. I've these Jsons:

//JSON A
{
    "flavors": [
        {
            "id": "52415800-8b69-11e0-9b19-734f1195ff37",
            "name": "256 MB Server",
            "ram": 256,
            "OS-FLV-DISABLED:disabled":true
            "links": [
                {
                    "rel": "self",
                    "href": "http://www.myexample.com"
                },
                {
                    "rel": "bookmark",
                    "href":"http://www.myexample.com"
                }
            ]
        },
        ...
}
//JSON B
{
    "flavors": [
        {
            "id": "52415800-8b69-11e0-9b19-734f1195ff37",
            "name": "256 MB Server",
            "links": [
                {
                    "rel": "self",
                    "href": "http://www.myexample.com"
                },
                {
                    "rel": "bookmark",
                    "href":"http://www.myexample.com"
                }
            ]
        },
        ...
}

As you can see JSON B has all the fields of JSON A except "ram" and "OS-FLV-DISABLED:disabled". The classes i used are the following:

public class Flavor {

    private String name;
    private List<Link> links;
    private int ram;
    private boolean OS_FLV_DISABLED_disabled;

//constructor and getter/setter
}

@XmlRootElement
public class GetFlavorsResponse {

    private List<Flavor> flavors;
    //constructor and getter/setter
}

Moreover just above the getter method isOS_FLV_DISABLED_disabled i've put the annotation @XmlElement(name = "OS-FLV-DISABLED:disabled") otherwise Jackson doesn't recognize this property. Here is the scheme of the situation:

When i receive JSON A there are no problems, JSON resultant is again JSON A; but when i receive JSON B the result of the process deserialization-serialization is:

    //JSON C
    {
        "flavors": [
            {
                "id": "52415800-8b69-11e0-9b19-734f1195ff37",
                "name": "256 MB Server",
                "ram": 0,
                "OS-FLV-DISABLED:disabled":false
                "links": [
                    {
                        "rel": "self",
                        "href": "http://www.myexample.com"
                    },
                    {
                        "rel": "bookmark",
                        "href":"http://www.myexample.com"
                    }
                ]
            },
            ...
    }

Now as first thing i thought that Jackson sets class properties that was not in Json with their default values, that is, 0 and false respectively for "ram" and "OS-FLV-DISABLED:disabled". So i've put the annotation

@JsonSerialize(include=JsonSerialize.Inclusion.NON_DEFAULT)

just above Flavor class. This works but the problem is that when i receive JSON A in which "ram" and "OS-FLV-DISABLED:disabled" have as values 0 and false (possible situation), the result of the process mentioned above is JSON B since these two fields are ignored. So established that this is not the solution for my problem, i read that some people suggest to use @JsonView or @JsonFilter but i don't understand how to apply these Jackson features in this case. I hope i was clear and thanks you in advance for your help.

Answer 1

One thing you can try is that make your ram and OS_FLV_DISABLED_disabled as Integer and Boolean types respectively. By this if no values come in json for these two properties then they will be null. And use this annotation @JsonInclude(Include.NON_NULL) to avoid serializing null properties.