Develop Reference

Get nested "results" list from OData V2 entity

To explain my issue, let's say that I'm retrieving the following OData V2 Entity:
{
"d": {
"EmployeeID": 1,
"LastName": "Davolio",
"FirstName": "Nancy",
"Orders": {
"results": [
{
"OrderID": 10258
}
]
},
"Territories": {
"results": [
{
"TerritoryID": "06897"
}
]
}
}
}
And I have the corresponding model Class:
#JsonRootName(value = "d")
public class Employee {
#JsonProperty("EmployeeID")
private int employeeId;
#JsonProperty("LastName")
private String lastName;
#JsonProperty("FirstName")
private String firstName;
#JsonProperty("Orders")
private List<Order> orders;
#JsonProperty("Territories")
private List<Territory> territories;
...
}
As expected the exception com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.MismatchedInputException is being triggered because the "Orders" and "Territories" collections are actually within the property "results", as the OData V2 states.
Do you guys have any idea how to ignore the nested "results" property and get the lists straight away?
Is a custom deserializer or wrapper class really needed in this case?
Thanks!

There are always multiple ways to tackle this problem.
One is to create a wrapper class and have Employee Directly reference it.
For example:
public class WrapperDto<T> implements Serializable {
#JsonProperty("results")
private List<T> elements;
}
public class Employee {
...
#JsonProperty("Orders")
private WrapperDto<Order> orders;
#JsonProperty("Territories")
private WrapperDto<Territory> territories;
...
}
when you want to get the orders, you have to call orders.getResults() to get the List
another solution can be found here where you have a custom wrapper:
How to map a nested value to a property using Jackson annotations?

Object mapper removing empty and null values when converting object to string Java

In response to api call, i'm sending Json Class Object as response.
I need response like this without empty objects being removed.
{
"links": {
"products": [],
"packages": []
},
"embedded":{
"products": [],
"packages": []
}
}
but final Response is looking like this
{
"links": {},
"embedded": {}
}

Two things to be aware of:
null and empty are different things.
AFAIK Jackson is configured to serialize properties with null values by default.
Make sure to properly initialize your properties in your object. For example:
class Dto {
private Link link;
private Embedded embedded;
//constructor, getters and setters...
}
class Link {
//by default these will be empty instead of null
private List<Product> products = new ArrayList<>();
private List<Package> packages = new ArrayList<>();
//constructor, getters and setters...
}
Make sure your classes are not extending another class with this annotation #JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL). Example:
//It tells Jackson to exclude any property with null values from being serialized
#JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL)
class BaseClass {
}
//Any property with null value will follow the rules stated in BaseClass
class Dto extends BaseClass {
private Link link;
private Embedded embedded;
//constructor, getters and setters...
}
class Link extends BaseClass {
/* rest of the design */
}
If you have the latter and you cannot edit BaseClass then you can define different rules in the specific classes:
class Link extends BaseClass{
//no matter what rules are defined elsewhere, this field will be serialized
#JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.ALWAYS)
private List<Product> products;
//same here
#JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.ALWAYS)
private List<Package> packages;
//constructor, getters and setters...
}

How to aggregate in spring data mongo db a nested object and avoid a PropertyReferenceException?

I am creating a new endpoint in springboot that will return simple stats on users generated from an aggregate query in a mongo database. However I get a PropertyReferenceException. I have read multiple stackoverflow questions about it, but didn't find one that solved this problem.
We have a mongo data scheme like this:
{
"_id" : ObjectId("5d795993288c3831c8dffe60"),
"user" : "000001",
"name" : "test",
"attributes" : {
"brand" : "Chrome",
"language" : "English" }
}
The database is filled with multiple users and we want using Springboot aggregate the stats of users per brand. There could be any number of attributes in the attributes object.
Here is the aggregation we are doing
Aggregation agg = newAggregation(
group("attributes.brand").count().as("number"),
project("number").and("type").previousOperation()
);
AggregationResults<Stats> groupResults
= mongoTemplate.aggregate(agg, Profile.class, Stats.class);
return groupResults.getMappedResults();
Which produces this mongo query which works:
> db.collection.aggregate([
{ "$group" : { "_id" : "$attributes.brand" , "number" : { "$sum" : 1}}} ,
{ "$project" : { "number" : 1 , "_id" : 0 , "type" : "$_id"}} ])
{ "number" : 4, "type" : "Chrome" }
{ "number" : 2, "type" : "Firefox" }
However when running a simple integration test we get this error:
org.springframework.data.mapping.PropertyReferenceException: No property brand found for type String! Traversed path: Profile.attributes.
From what I understand, it seems that since attributes is a Map<String, String> there might be a schematic problem. And in the mean time I can't modify the Profile object.
Is there something I am missing in the aggregation, or anything I could change in my Stats object?
For reference, here are the data models we're using, to work with JSON and jackson.
The Stats data model:
#Document
public class Stats {
#JsonProperty
private String type;
#JsonProperty
private int number;
public Stats() {}
/* ... */
}
The Profile data model:
#Document
public class Profiles {
#NotNull
#JsonProperty
private String user;
#NotNull
#JsonProperty
private String name;
#JsonProperty
private Map<String, String> attributes = new HashMap<>();
public Stats() {}
/* ... */
}

I found a solution, which was a combination of two problems:
The PropertyReferenceException was indeed caused because attributes is a Map<String, String> which means there is no schemes for Mongo.
The error message No property brand found for type String! Traversed path: Profile.attributes. means that the Map object doesn't have a brand property in it.
In order to fix that without touching my orginal Profile class, I had to create a new custom class which would map the attributes to an attributes object having the properties I want to aggreate on like:
public class StatsAttributes {
#JsonProperty
private String brand;
#JsonProperty
private String language;
public StatsAttributes() {}
/* ... */
}
Then I created a custom StatsProfile which would leverage my StatsAttributes and would be similar to the the original Profile object without modifying it.
#Document
public class StatsProfile {
#JsonProperty
private String user;
#JsonProperty
private StatsAttributes attributes;
public StatsProfile() {}
/* ... */
}
With that I made disapear my problem with the PropertyReferenceException using my new class StatsAggregation in the aggregation:
AggregationResults<Stats> groupResults
= mongoTemplate.aggregate(agg, StatsProfile.class, Stats.class);
However I would not get any results. It seems the query would not find any document in the database. That's where I realied that production mongo objects had the field "_class: com.company.dao.model.Profile" which was tied to the Profile object.
After some research, for the new StatsProfile to work it would need to be a #TypeAlias("Profile"). After looking around, I found that I also needed to precise a collection name which would lead to:
#Document(collection = "profile")
#TypeAlias("Profile")
public class StatsProfile {
/* ... */
}
And with all that, finally it worked!
I suppose that's not the prettiest solution, I wish I would not need to create a new Profile object and just consider the attributes as a StatsAttributes.class somehow in the mongoTemplate query. If anyone knows how to, please share 🙏

Is there a way to return association objects with id in spring data rest without Projection

I am using spring-boot-starter-parent 1.4.1.RELEASE.
Spring boot #ResponseBody doesn't serialize entity id by default.
If I use exposeIdsFor returns the id but I need to configure this for each class
e.g
RepositoryRestConfiguration.exposeIdsFor(User.class);
RepositoryRestConfiguration.exposeIdsFor(Address.class);
Is there a simpler configuration to do this without configuring each entity class.
Refer: https://jira.spring.io/browse/DATAREST-366
The REST resource will render the attribute as a URI to it’s corresponding associated resource. We need to return the associated object instead of URI.
If I use Projection, it will returns the associated objects but I need to configure this for each class
e.g
#Entity
public class Person {
#Id #GeneratedValue
private Long id;
private String firstName, lastName;
#ManyToOne
private Address address;
…
}
PersonRepository:
interface PersonRepository extends CrudRepository<Person, Long> {}
PersonRepository returns,
{
"firstName" : "Frodo",
"lastName" : "Baggins",
"_links" : {
"self" : {
"href" : "http://localhost:8080/persons/1"
},
"address" : {
"href" : "http://localhost:8080/persons/1/address"
}
}
}
My Projection:
#Projection(name = "inlineAddress", types = { Person.class })
interface InlineAddress {
String getFirstName();
String getLastName();
Address getAddress();
}
After adding projection, it returns..
{
"firstName" : "Frodo",
"lastName" : "Baggins",
"address" : {
"street": "Bag End",
"state": "The Shire",
"country": "Middle Earth"
},
"_links" : {
"self" : {
"href" : "http://localhost:8080/persons/1"
},
"address" : {
"href" : "http://localhost:8080/persons/1/address"
}
}
}
If some other classes having the association as an address, then I need to add projection for those classes also.
But I don't want to configure for each classes. How to implement the dynamic Projection? So that all my entities will return the nested object in response.
Refer: https://jira.spring.io/browse/DATAREST-221

Regarding your first question, which was already answered here, exposeIdsFor accepts an arbitrary number of arguments. Also, as mentionned in this thread If all your entity classes are located in the same package, you could get a list of your classes using the Reflections library and feed it to exposeIdsFor().

Json Deserialization - Mapping nested object keys directly to class

I have a json like -
{
"type" : "employee",
"details" : {
"name" : "ABC",
"age" : 12,
"sex" : "male"
}
}
And a Java Class like -
public class Person {
String name;
String sex;
String type;
int age;
----getters and setters
}
I was wondering is there a ways to directly map the attributes of the details object to the person class like details.name to Person.name.
I know this can be achieved with custom deserializers, but I was hoping to avoid it. May be some annotations that GSON or Jackson provides.

There are a few ways to solve this, but what I would do is create the following class:
public class PersonWrapper {
private String type;
#JsonProperty("details")
private Person person;
}
EDIT:
If you don't want to add a wrapper class, you can try adding #JsonRootName(value = "details") to your Person class.

you can use #JsonProperties for mapping