Using Jackson ObjectMapper to serialize the subclass name into JSON, not the superclass

Question

In the following Jackson/Java code that serializes objects into JSON, I am getting this:

{\"animal\":{\"x\":\"x\"}}

However, what I actually wa

Answer 1

This is the only way I can think of to do it, and it is ugly. Is there a better way?

   @JsonWriteNullProperties(false)
   public static class AnimalContainer
   {
      private Animal animal;

      public Animal getCat()
      {
         return animal instanceof Cat ? animal : null;
      }
      public void setCat(Cat cat)
      {
         this.animal = cat;
      }
      public Animal getDog()
      {
         return animal instanceof Dog ? animal : null;
      }
      public void setDog(Dog dog)
      {
         this.animal = dog;
      }
      public Animal getFish()
      {
         return animal instanceof Fish ? animal : null;
      }
      public void setFish(Fish fish)
      {
         this.animal = fish;
      }
   }