json - How do I exclude fields with Jackson not using annotations?

Question

I need to exclude some fields by names before rendering. The list of fields is dynamic, so I can't use annotations.

I've tried to create custom serializer but I can't get field name there.

In GSON I've used ExclusionStrategy, but Jackson has no such functionality. Is there an equivalent?

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13764280/how-do-i-exclude-fields-with-jackson-not-using-annotations

Answer 1

The below example of excluding fields by name is from my blog post, Gson v Jackson - Part 4. (Search for the PropertyFilterMixIn.) This example demonstrates using a FilterProvider with a SimpleBeanPropertyFilter to serializeAllExcept a user-specified list of field names.

@JsonFilter("filter properties by name")  
class PropertyFilterMixIn {}  

class Bar  
{  
  public String id = "42";  
  public String name = "Fred";  
  public String color = "blue";  
  public Foo foo = new Foo();  
}  

class Foo  
{  
  public String id = "99";  
  public String size = "big";  
  public String height = "tall";  
}  

public class JacksonFoo  
{  
  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception  
  {  
    ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();  
    mapper.getSerializationConfig().addMixInAnnotations(  
        Object.class, PropertyFilterMixIn.class);  

    String[] ignorableFieldNames = { "id", "color" };  
    FilterProvider filters = new SimpleFilterProvider()  
      .addFilter("filter properties by name",   
          SimpleBeanPropertyFilter.serializeAllExcept(  
              ignorableFieldNames));  
    ObjectWriter writer = mapper.writer(filters);  

    System.out.println(writer.writeValueAsString(new Bar()));  
    // output:  
    // {"name":"James","foo":{"size":"big","height":"tall"}}  
  }  
} 

(Note: The relevant API may have changed slightly with a recent Jackson release.)

While the example does use a seemingly unnecessary annotation, the annotation is not applied to the fields to be excluded. (To help get the API changed to simplify the necessary configuration a bit, please don't hesitate to vote for implementation of issue JACKSON-274.