Jackson JSON serialization, recursion avoidance by level defining

Question

I use Jackson library for serialization of my pojo objects into JSON representation. For example I have class A and class B:

class A {
  privat         


        

Answer 1

After several months and a lot of research, I've implemented my own solution to keep my domain clear of jackson dependencies.

public class Parent {
    private Child child;
    public Child getChild(){return child;} 
    public void setChild(Child child){this.child=child;}
}

public class Child {
    private Parent parent;
    public Child getParent(){return parent;} 
    public void setParent(Parent parent){this.parent=parent;}
}

First, you have to declare each of your entities of the bidirectional relationship in something like this:

public interface BidirectionalDefinition {

    @JsonIdentityInfo(generator=ObjectIdGenerators.PropertyGenerator.class, property="id", scope=Parent.class)
    public interface ParentDef{};

    @JsonIdentityInfo(generator=ObjectIdGenerators.PropertyGenerator.class, property="id", scope=Child.class)
    public interface ChildDef{};

}

After that, the object mapper can be automatically configured:

ObjectMapper om = new ObjectMapper();
Class<?>[] definitions = BidirectionalDefinition.class.getDeclaredClasses();
for (Class<?> definition : definitions) {
    om.addMixInAnnotations(definition.getAnnotation(JsonIdentityInfo.class).scope(), definition);
}