How to ignore "null" or empty properties in json, globally, using Spring configuration

Question

I'm trying to return only the properties that have values, but the null ones are also being returned.

I know that there's an annotation that does this ( @JsonInclude(Include.NON_NULL) ), but then I need these in every single entity class.

So, my question is: Is there a way to configure this globally through spring config? (avoiding XML, preferably)

EDIT: It seems that this question has been considered a duplicate, but I don't think so. The real question here is how to configure it through spring config, which I couldn't find in other questions.

Jon Peterson · Accepted Answer · 2016-08-08T13:23:29.047

24

If you are using Spring Boot, this is as easy as:

spring.jackson.serialization-inclusion=non_null

If not, then you can configure the ObjectMapper in the MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter like so:

@Configuration
class WebMvcConfiguration extends WebMvcConfigurationSupport {
    @Override
    protected void extendMessageConverters(List<HttpMessageConverter<?>> converters) {
        for(HttpMessageConverter converter: converters) {
            if(converter instanceof MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter) {
                ObjectMapper mapper = ((MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter)converter).getObjectMapper()
                mapper.setSerializationInclusion(Include.NON_NULL);
            }
        }
    }
}

edited Aug 08 '16 at 13:23

answered Aug 08 '16 at 12:30

Jon Peterson

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15

It seems you need to use 'spring.jackson.default-property-inclusion = non_null' with newer Spring Boot (1.5.2) – David Tinker Mar 07 '17 at 08:22
The property from @DavidTinker didn't work for me, in Spring Boot 2.25, while the Java manual configuration worked – Kevin Guanche Darias Mar 13 '20 at 13:11

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 01 '20 at 12:15

4

In newer versions of Spring Boot (2.0+), use:

spring.jackson.default-property-inclusion=non_null

answered Jun 01 '20 at 12:15

JRA_TLL

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score 3 · Answer 3 · edited Feb 15 '18 at 14:11

3

If you use jackson ObjectMapper for generating json, you can define following custom ObjectMapper for this purpose and use it instead:

<bean id="jacksonObjectMapper" class="com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper">
   <property name="serializationInclusion">
      <value type="com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonInclude.Include">NON_NULL</value>
   </property>
</bean>

edited Feb 15 '18 at 14:11

user85421

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answered Aug 08 '16 at 12:19

Abolfazl Hashemi

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António Ribeiro · Answer 4 · 2020-11-24T22:45:13.030

The programmatic alternative to Abolfazl Hashemi's answer is the following:

/**
 * Jackson configuration class.
 */
@Configuration
public class JacksonConfig {

    @Bean
    public ObjectMapper buildObjectMapper() {
       return new ObjectMapper().setSerializationInclusion(Include.NON_NULL);
    }
}

This way, you're basically telling to the Spring container that, every time an ObjectMapper is used, only properties with non-null values are to be included in the mappings.

Another alternative, as per the Spring Boot documentation, for Jackson 2+, is to configure it in the application.properties:

spring.jackson.default-property-inclusion=non_null

How to ignore "null" or empty properties in json, globally, using Spring configuration

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