custom-serialization.asciidoc

title	order	layout
Appendix: Customizing Serialization	115	page

Appendix: Customizing Serialization

When serializing/deserializing data in Java Endpoints, developer might be interested in renaming properties, and excluding certain properties and types.

Omitting properties helps the application avoid putting sensitive data in the wire like password fields. Leaving out types helps to simplify the typescript exported classes, and to avoid circular dependencies in the serialzed JSON output.

Annotations

Vaadin relies on the Jackson JSON library to do serialization, thus, it is possible to use their annotations for renaming properties or excluding data.

The @JsonProperty annotation

It is used to define a method as a "setter" or "getter" for a logical property, or to define a field for being serialized and deserialized as a specific logical property.

The annotation value indicates the name of the property in the JSON object, by default it takes the java name of the method or field.

public class Student {
   @JsonProperty("bookId")
   private String id;
   private String name;

   @JsonProperty("name")
   public void setFirstName(String name) {
      this.name = name;
   }

   @JsonProperty("name")
   public String getFirstName() {
      return name;
   }

   @JsonProperty
   public int getRating() {
      return StudentRating.getRatingFor(name);
   }
}

The @JsonIgnore annotation

Indicates that the logical property used in serialization and deserialization for the accessor (field, getter or setter) is to be ignored

@JsonIgnore
private String category;

@JsonIgnore
public String getCategory() {
  return category;
}

@JsonIgnore
public void setCategory(String category) {
   this.category = category;
}

The @JsonIgnoreProperties annotation

It ignores a set of logical properties in serialization and deserialization. It must be used at class level.

@JsonIgnoreProperties(value = { "id"}, allowGetters = true)
public class Product {
   private String id;
   private String name;

   ...
}

In addition, to the properties passes as the annotation value, the @JsonIgnoreProperties annotation accepts the following options

allowSetters

For ignored properties allow setting properties when deserializing, but do not list then in serialization.

In the next snippet, password would not be in the payload returned to TypeScript, but TypeScript can set it.

@JsonIgnoreProperties(value = { "password"}, allowSetters = true)
public class User {
   private String name;
   private String password;

   ...
}

allowGetters

For the ignored properties list this properties in serialized object but disallow to set it.

It is useful for read-only properties

@JsonIgnoreProperties(value = { "id"}, allowGetters = true)
public class Product {
   private String id;
   private String name;

   ...
}

ignoreUnknown

A flag that allows not failing during deserialization when there is a property in the json object that has not any correspondence in the Java class.

This is a corner case, and should not be necessary in Vaadin since TypeScript generated API should take care on not passing unknown properties.

The @JsonIgnoreType annotation

A class level annotation that indicates that all properties of the annotated class type will be ignored during serialization and deserialization.

In the following example, the field client in the Sale will be omitted in the JSON result.

@JsonIgnoreType
public class Client {
   ...
}

@JsonIgnoreProperties(value = { "password"}, allowSetters = true)
public class Sale {
   private Client client;

   private Product product;
   private int ammount;
   private double total;

   ...
}