Use of JsonIgnoreProperties specific property deserialize properties exists only in JSON - java

I stumbled upon some code that adds JsonIgnoreProperties to a property that doesn't exists in class, but exists in JSON, e.g.:
#JsonIgnoreProperties({"ignoreprop"})
public class VO {
public String prop;
}
When JSON is
{ "prop":"1", "ignoreprop":"9999"}
I wonder if ignoring properties has any advantage(s) performance-wise or is it just redundant code?
Annotation that can be used to either suppress serialization of properties (during serialization), or ignore processing of JSON properties read (during deserialization).
EDIT
Is there an advantage(s) ignoring specific property over all (with
#JsonIgnoreProperties(ignoreUnknown=true))?

I wonder if ignoring properties has any advantage
Yes, it is used a lot for forward-compatibility in services. Let's say you have Services A and B. Currently A sends requests to B with some JSON objects.
Now you want to support a new property in the JSON. If you have this feature you are able to let A start sending the new property before B knows how to handle it. Decoupling the development processes of those two services.
ignoring specific property over all
This case does have some minor performance advantages. First, it doesn't try to parse this property which can be a simple string or complex object/array. Second, it helps you avoid handling an exception. Think that all the following can be valid calls and you only care about prop:
{ "prop":"1", "ignoreprop":"9999"}
{ "prop":"1", "ignoreprop":{ "a": { "key": "value", "foo": false }}}
{ "prop":"1", "ignoreprop":[1,2,3,4,5,6..... 1000000]}

From the documentation, mainly the purpose of use this is To ignore any unknown properties in JSON input without exception: which is better not to popup exception when properties are not found either in class or JSON, and this might helps serializing faster docs
Example:
// to prevent specified fields from being serialized or deserialized
// (i.e. not include in JSON output; or being set even if they were included)
#JsonIgnoreProperties({ "internalId", "secretKey" })
// To ignore any unknown properties in JSON input without exception:
#JsonIgnoreProperties(ignoreUnknown=true)
Starting with 2.0, this annotation can be applied both to classes and to properties. If used for both, actual set will be union of all ignorals: that is, you can only add properties to ignore, not remove or override. So you can not remove properties to ignore using per-property annotation.

Related

How to make deserialization fail with Jackson when JSON is incomplete? [duplicate]

I'm using Jackson's readValue() method on an object mapper to read from a JSON file and convert it into my java object.
eg.
mapperObject.readValue( node, MyTargetClass.class )
Are there any annotations that I can set on MyTargetClass to enforce required attributes? For example, if I have a JSON object with properties ABC,DEF and GHI, and my Json is the following
{
"ABC" : "somevalue"
"DEF" : "someothervalue"
}
I want it to fail somehow, and only succeed on the readValue if it contained ABC, DEF and GHI.
You can mark a property as required with the #JsonProperty(required = true) annotation, and it will throw a JsonMappingException during deserialization if the property is missing or null.
Edit: I received a downvote for this without comment. I'd love to know why, since it does exactly the right thing.
Jackson does not include validation functionality, and this is by design (i.e. that is considered out-of-scope). But what is usually used is Bean Validation API implementation.
The nice thing about this is decoupling between data format handling, and validation logic.
This is what frameworks like DropWizard use; and it's the direction JAX-RS (like Jersey) are taking things for JAX-RS 2.0.
If you want to make sure a json field is provided, you have to use the #JsonProperty(value = "fieldName", required = true) annotation as a parameter to the constructor. But this is not enough, also the Constructor should have #JsonCreator annotation.
For example, if you have a field named 'endPoint' and you want o make sure it is provided in the JSON file, then the following code will throw an exception if it is not provided.
#JsonCreator
public QuerySettings(#JsonProperty(value = "endPoint", required = true) String endPoint) {
this.endPoint = endPoint;
}
I found this link helpful to understand the Jackson annotations. It also well explains why required=true is not enough and counter-intuitive to its name.
If you are neither satisfied with using #JsonProperty(required = true) as it works only with #JsonCreator nor with the use of bean validation then one more way of tackling it would be to catch this in your setter methods for the relevant variables.
You can simply check if the variable is null before setting it and throw an IllegalArgumentException or NullPointerException (as preferred by few people)
Note: It depends on how your POJO is defined too, so please make sure that it is going the setter method route for this solution to work.

How to make a dynamic DTO without to send a complete Payload in Spring

I have the updateProvider(ProviderUpdateDto providerUpdt) method in my Spring controller, But I do not see the need to send the whole payload of the provider entity, if for example the client can only update the name or other attribute, that is, it is not necessary to send the whole entity if only it is necessary to update a field, this produces a Excessive bandwidth consumption when it is not necessary.
What is a better practice to send only the fields that are going to be updated and be able to build a DTO dynamically? and How would I do if I'm using Spring Boot to build my API?
You can use Jackson library, it provides the annotation #JsonInclude(Include.NON_NULL) and with this only properties with not null values will be passed to your client.
Check the link http://www.baeldung.com/jackson-ignore-null-fields for an example.
There are many technique to improve bandwidth usage
not pretty print Json
enable HTTP GZIP compression
However, it is more important to ensure ur API is logically sound, omitting some fields may break the business rules, too fine grain API design will also increase the interface complexity
Another option would be to have a DTO object for field changes which would work for every entity you have. E.g:
class EntityUpdateDTO {
// The class of the object you are updating. Or just use a custom identifier
private Class<? extends DTO> entityClass;
// the id of such object
private Long entityId;
// the fields you are updating
private String[] updateFields;
// the values of those fields...
private Object[] updateValues;
}
Example of a json object:
{
entityClass: 'MyEntityDTO',
entityId: 324123,
updateFields: [
'property1',
'property2'
],
updateValues: [
'blabla',
25,
]
}
Might bring some issues if any of your updateValues are complex objects themselves though...
Your API would become updateProvider(EntityUpdateDTO update);.
Of course you should leave out the entityClass field if you have an update API for each DTO, as you'd already know which class entity you are working on...
Still, unless you are working with huge objects I wouldn't worry about bandwidth.

Check if JSON is valid in JAVA using Jackson

I have a JSON string which I am storing it in DB as a string. In front-end, I am rendering this JSON as object.
I am using:
JSON.parse(string);
Uncaught Syntax error: Unexpected Token
String :
{
"id": "295cd59f-4033-438c-9bf4-c571829f134e",
"from": "Shrisha S.<shrisha#s.com>",
"to": [
"Katie Porter <katie.porter#ss.com>"
],
"cc": [
"Jack d<jack.d#dd.com>, Keerthi<keerthi.s#dd.com>"
],
"bcc": [
]
}
Is there any way I can check If JSON is valid or not in JAVA?
One thing to be noted here is that, I don't have a schema defined for JSON which I can map to, i.e. JSON can hold anything.
I am currently trying out with JACKSON but for that I need a pre-defined schema which I don't have. Is there anyway this can be fixed?
You can read it as a JsonNode, no need to map it to a specific Class, its generic:
try{
ObjectMapper objectMapper = ...;
JsonNode jsonNode = objectMapper.readTree(yourJsonString);
} catch(JsonProcessingException e){........}
There are two different parts to the question. First is whether it is valid JSON, and second whether it contains specific set of information.
#pdem already answered first part (you can also read JSON as java.lang.Object to get the same effect).
But for second part, JSON Schema is not usually a good way, as it focuses on JSON aspects but not on more meaningful part of actual data, possible sub-typing and so on, which matter at Java level where all actual data processing occurs.
So usually you would define a POJO (or ideally just use one you use for actual data processing), bind to it (with ObjectMapper.readValue()), and then check whether data is not only technically valid wrt low-level data types, but also that it conforms to additional business constraints.
For latter part you can either write Java code, or use an annotation based framework such as Bean Validation API (JSR-303); see for example:
http://beanvalidation.org/
plus there are many #bean-validation tagged questions here as well related to usage. Some frameworks add explicit support for it; for example the best Java service framework, DropWizard does this. Others like Spring Boot have support as well.
JSON specification forbids it from using newline characters, make sure you are replacing newline characters see
Regex replace all newline characters with comma
make sure you do this before storing it in DB.
public boolean isValidJson(final String json) {
try {
final ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();
final JsonNode jsonNode = objectMapper.readTree(json);
return jsonNode instanceof ContainerNode;
} catch (JsonProcessingException jpe) {
return false;
}
}

Jackson ObjectMapper: specify required fields [duplicate]

I'm using Jackson's readValue() method on an object mapper to read from a JSON file and convert it into my java object.
eg.
mapperObject.readValue( node, MyTargetClass.class )
Are there any annotations that I can set on MyTargetClass to enforce required attributes? For example, if I have a JSON object with properties ABC,DEF and GHI, and my Json is the following
{
"ABC" : "somevalue"
"DEF" : "someothervalue"
}
I want it to fail somehow, and only succeed on the readValue if it contained ABC, DEF and GHI.
You can mark a property as required with the #JsonProperty(required = true) annotation, and it will throw a JsonMappingException during deserialization if the property is missing or null.
Edit: I received a downvote for this without comment. I'd love to know why, since it does exactly the right thing.
Jackson does not include validation functionality, and this is by design (i.e. that is considered out-of-scope). But what is usually used is Bean Validation API implementation.
The nice thing about this is decoupling between data format handling, and validation logic.
This is what frameworks like DropWizard use; and it's the direction JAX-RS (like Jersey) are taking things for JAX-RS 2.0.
If you want to make sure a json field is provided, you have to use the #JsonProperty(value = "fieldName", required = true) annotation as a parameter to the constructor. But this is not enough, also the Constructor should have #JsonCreator annotation.
For example, if you have a field named 'endPoint' and you want o make sure it is provided in the JSON file, then the following code will throw an exception if it is not provided.
#JsonCreator
public QuerySettings(#JsonProperty(value = "endPoint", required = true) String endPoint) {
this.endPoint = endPoint;
}
I found this link helpful to understand the Jackson annotations. It also well explains why required=true is not enough and counter-intuitive to its name.
If you are neither satisfied with using #JsonProperty(required = true) as it works only with #JsonCreator nor with the use of bean validation then one more way of tackling it would be to catch this in your setter methods for the relevant variables.
You can simply check if the variable is null before setting it and throw an IllegalArgumentException or NullPointerException (as preferred by few people)
Note: It depends on how your POJO is defined too, so please make sure that it is going the setter method route for this solution to work.

Jackson equivalent to #XmlSeeAlso

I am writing a RESTful web service using Java and Jersey, where the service will accept either XML or JSON inputs. Jackson is used as the JSON deserializer, and integrated into the Jersey config.
One of the endpoints is a POST request to a URL, where the content can be one of several different Java classes, and there is a common base class. These classes - with XML annotations - are:
#XmlRootElement(name = "action")
#XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.NONE)
#XmlSeeAlso({ FirstAction.class, SecondAction.class, ThirdAction.class })
public abstract class BaseAction {
}
#XmlRootElement(name = "first-action")
#XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.NONE)
public class FirstAction extends BaseAction implements Serializable {
}
// Likewise for SecondAction, ThirdAction
In my resource I can declare a method like:
#POST
#Path("/{id}/action")
public Response invokeAction(#PathParam("id") String id, BaseAction action) {...}
Then I can POST an XML fragment that looks like <firstAction/> and my method will be invoked with a FirstAction instance. So far so good.
Where I'm struggling is getting the JSON deserialization to work as seamlessly as the XML deserialization. Where the #XmlSeeAlso annotation was critical to get the XML deserialization working properly, it seemed that the equivalent for JSON was #JsonSubTypes. So I annotated the classes like this:
// XML annotations removed for brevity, but they are present as in the previous code snippet
#JsonSubTypes({ #JsonSubTypes.Type(name = "first-action", value = FirstAction.class),
#JsonSubTypes.Type(name = "second-action", value = SecondAction.class),
#JsonSubTypes.Type(name = "third-action", value = ThirdAction.class) })
public abstract class BaseAction {
}
#JsonRootName("first-action")
public class FirstAction extends BaseAction implements Serializable {
}
// Likewise for SecondAction, ThirdAction
I then feed it my test input: { "first-action": null } but all I can get is:
"org.codehaus.jackson.map.JsonMappingException: Root name 'first-action' does not match expected ('action') for type [simple type, class com.alu.openstack.domain.compute.server.actions.BaseAction]"
Unfortunately since I'm trying to be compatible with someone else's API I can't change my sample input - { "first-action": null } has to work, and deliver to my method an object of class FirstAction. (The action doesn't have any fields, which is why null shouldn't be a problem - it's the type of the class that's important).
What's the correct way to have the JSON deserialization work in the same way as the XML deserialization already is?
If you are using Jackson, you are looking for #JsonTypeInfo and #Type . Please see here for more information
JSON does not work the way XML does, so the solution is not identical.
What you need to use is (like the other answer said), #JsonTypeInfo. That only triggers inclusion and use of the type identifier. If so, then '#JsonSubTypes` will be of use in deserialization.
The reason this indicator must be used is simple: if you have more than one alternative type to deserialize to, there must be something to differentiate.
Note, too, that this does NOT have to be a property -- while most users choose "As.PROPERTY" inclusion, it is not (IMO) the best way. "WRAPPER_OBJECT" may be what you are looking for, as it adds an extra intermediate JSON property, which is somewhat similar to what XML does.
I investigated the use of #JsonTypeInfo but ran into problems because I could not alter the input format. The parser absolutely had to be able to handle input { "first-action":null }. This ruled out the possibility of adding an #type or #class property. Using a wrapper object may have worked, but it choked on the null payload.
A crucial point was that I was using the UNWRAP_ROOT_PROPERTY configuration option. Jackson was absolutely insisting on finding an action property and I could not get it to consider anything else. So, I had to selectively disable UNWRAP_ROOT_PROPERTY for certain domain objects, so that Jackson would be open to parsing alternatives. I modified the project's ContextResolver.getContext(...) implementation to check for a #JsonRootName annotation - since this only has meaning if wrapping is enabled, I used the presence of this annotation to determine whether to return an object mapper configured with root property wrapping on, or off.
At this stage, I might have been able to use #JsonTypeInfo(include=JsonTypeInfo.As.WRAPPER_OBJECT, ...), except for the issue with the null payload mentioned above (this is used to indicate that the child object has no properties - if the spec I was working from had given an empty object {} instead then there would not be a problem). So to proceed I needed a custom type resolver.
I created a new class that extended org.codehaus.jackson.map.TypeDeserializer, with the purpose that whenever Jackson is called to deserialize a BaseAction instance, it will call this custom deserializer. The deserializer will be given a subtypes array, which for BaseAction maps first-action, second-action, etc. to FirstAction.class, etc. The deserializer reads the input stream for the field name, then matches the name to a class. If the next token is an object, then it finds and delegates to the appropriate deserializer for that class, or if it is null it finds the no-args constructor and invokes it to get an object.
A class that implements org.codehaus.jackson.map.jsontype.TypeResolverBuilder is needed that can build an instance of this previous class, and then the TypeResolverBuilder is given as a #JsonTypeResolver annotation on the BaseAction class.

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