JSTEP

Jackson STrategic Enhancement Proposals (JSTEP)

With Jackson 3, we want to start experimenting with something like "Jackson Big Ideas", maybe similar to Kafka KIPs. Not unlike IETF RFCs, but bit smaller documents.

Name tentatively chosen is "JSTEP" (Jackson STrategic Enhancement Proposal").

Proposed JSTEPs

1. Major version upgrade details: JSTEP-1
2. Jackson 3 default setting, behavior changes: JSTEP-2
3. JsonNode improvements for Jackson 3: JSTEP-3
4. Replace checked JsonProcessingException with unchecked JacksonException: JSTEP-4
5. Unify Date/Time handling, formats, defaults across JDK Classic, Joda and Java 8 date/time: JSTEP-5
6. More modular on/off "Feature"s beyond existing mapper/ser/deser, token-factory/parser/generator
   • Note that JSTEP-3 above contains one for JsonNode configuration
   • First other one: contain Enum-specific definitions? (toString() vs name() vs index()
7. Add some kind of processing limits for accepted input (max depth of nesting, number of keys per Object), to protected against DoS attacks. Similar to (for example), Woodstox' limits.

Initially proposed, but discarded:

• Add proper Tree Model for jackson-dataformat-xml (instead, minor improvements to existing JsonNode, like auto-conversion of ObjectNode to ArrayNode

Sources for new JSTEPs

Although any improvement idea can become a JSTEP, one good source is Major Design Issues, which lists areas where current design limits implementation improvements.

Other

More generic of Jackson 3 changes are improvement ideas are listed on Jackson3 Changes page; this is an older page also including some of changes already made.