How to reuse Jersey's JSON/JAXB for serialization?

Question

I have a JAX-RS REST service implemented using Jersey. One of the cool features of JAX-RS/Jersey is how easily a POJO can be turned into a REST service, simply by sprinkling

Answer 1

JAXB annotations work fine when serializing to XML. The main problem is that JAXB does not support empty arrays. So when serializing something like this...

List myArray = new ArrayList();

...to json via jaxb anottations all your empty arrays become null instead of [].

To solve this you can just serialize your pojos directly to json via jackson.

Take a look at this from Jersey's user guide: http://jersey.java.net/nonav/documentation/latest/user-guide.html#d0e1959

This is the best way to use Jackson provider without JAXB. Moreover, you can always use the latest version of jackson by downlaoding jackson-all-x.y.z-jar from its web.

This method will not interfere with your jaxb annotations so I would suggest to have a try!