Gson: How to exclude specific fields from Serialization without annotations

Question

I\'m trying to learn Gson and I\'m struggling with field exclusion. Here are my classes

public class Student {    
  private Long                id;
  privat         


        

Answer 1

So, you want to exclude firstName and country.name. Here is what your ExclusionStrategy should look like

    public class TestExclStrat implements ExclusionStrategy {

        public boolean shouldSkipClass(Class<?> arg0) {
            return false;
        }

        public boolean shouldSkipField(FieldAttributes f) {

            return (f.getDeclaringClass() == Student.class && f.getName().equals("firstName"))||
            (f.getDeclaringClass() == Country.class && f.getName().equals("name"));
        }

    }

If you see closely it returns true for Student.firstName and Country.name, which is what you want to exclude.

You need to apply this ExclusionStrategy like this,

    Gson gson = new GsonBuilder()
        .setExclusionStrategies(new TestExclStrat())
        //.serializeNulls() <-- uncomment to serialize NULL fields as well
        .create();
    Student src = new Student();
    String json = gson.toJson(src);
    System.out.println(json);

This returns:

{ "middleName": "J.", "initials": "P.F", "lastName": "Fry", "country": { "id": 91}}

I assume the country object is initialized with id = 91L in student class.

---

You may get fancy. For example, you do not want to serialize any field that contains "name" string in its name. Do this:

public boolean shouldSkipField(FieldAttributes f) {
    return f.getName().toLowerCase().contains("name"); 
}

This will return:

{ "initials": "P.F", "country": { "id": 91 }}

---

EDIT: Added more info as requested.

This ExclusionStrategy will do the thing, but you need to pass "Fully Qualified Field Name". See below:

    public class TestExclStrat implements ExclusionStrategy {

        private Class<?> c;
        private String fieldName;
        public TestExclStrat(String fqfn) throws SecurityException, NoSuchFieldException, ClassNotFoundException
        {
            this.c = Class.forName(fqfn.substring(0, fqfn.lastIndexOf(".")));
            this.fieldName = fqfn.substring(fqfn.lastIndexOf(".")+1);
        }
        public boolean shouldSkipClass(Class<?> arg0) {
            return false;
        }

        public boolean shouldSkipField(FieldAttributes f) {

            return (f.getDeclaringClass() == c && f.getName().equals(fieldName));
        }

    }

Here is how we can use it generically.

    Gson gson = new GsonBuilder()
        .setExclusionStrategies(new TestExclStrat("in.naishe.test.Country.name"))
        //.serializeNulls()
        .create();
    Student src = new Student();
    String json = gson.toJson(src);
    System.out.println(json); 

It returns:

{ "firstName": "Philip" , "middleName": "J.", "initials": "P.F", "lastName": "Fry", "country": { "id": 91 }}

Answer 2

After reading all available answers I found out, that most flexible, in my case, was to use custom @Exclude annotation. So, I implemented simple strategy for this (I didn't want to mark all fields using @Expose nor I wanted to use transient which conflicted with in app Serializable serialization) :

Annotation:

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Target(ElementType.FIELD)
public @interface Exclude {
}

Strategy:

public class AnnotationExclusionStrategy implements ExclusionStrategy {

    @Override
    public boolean shouldSkipField(FieldAttributes f) {
        return f.getAnnotation(Exclude.class) != null;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean shouldSkipClass(Class<?> clazz) {
        return false;
    }
}

Usage:

new GsonBuilder().setExclusionStrategies(new AnnotationExclusionStrategy()).create();

Answer 3

This what I always use:

The default behaviour implemented in Gson is that null object fields are ignored.

Means Gson object does not serialize fields with null values to JSON. If a field in a Java object is null, Gson excludes it.

You can use this function to convert some object to null or well set by your own

     /**
   * convert object to json
   */
  public String toJson(Object obj) {
    // Convert emtpy string and objects to null so we don't serialze them
    setEmtpyStringsAndObjectsToNull(obj);
    return gson.toJson(obj);
  }

  /**
   * Sets all empty strings and objects (all fields null) including sets to null.
   *
   * @param obj any object
   */
  public void setEmtpyStringsAndObjectsToNull(Object obj) {
    for (Field field : obj.getClass().getDeclaredFields()) {
      field.setAccessible(true);
      try {
        Object fieldObj = field.get(obj);
        if (fieldObj != null) {
          Class fieldType = field.getType();
          if (fieldType.isAssignableFrom(String.class)) {
            if(fieldObj.equals("")) {
              field.set(obj, null);
            }
          } else if (fieldType.isAssignableFrom(Set.class)) {
            for (Object item : (Set) fieldObj) {
              setEmtpyStringsAndObjectsToNull(item);
            }
            boolean setFielToNull = true;
            for (Object item : (Set) field.get(obj)) {
              if(item != null) {
                setFielToNull = false;
                break;
              }
            }
            if(setFielToNull) {
              setFieldToNull(obj, field);
            }
          } else if (!isPrimitiveOrWrapper(fieldType)) {
            setEmtpyStringsAndObjectsToNull(fieldObj);
            boolean setFielToNull = true;
            for (Field f : fieldObj.getClass().getDeclaredFields()) {
              f.setAccessible(true);
              if(f.get(fieldObj) != null) {
                setFielToNull = false;
                break;
              }
            }
            if(setFielToNull) {
              setFieldToNull(obj, field);
            }
          }
        }
      } catch (IllegalAccessException e) {
        System.err.println("Error while setting empty string or object to null: " + e.getMessage());
      }
    }
  }

  private void setFieldToNull(Object obj, Field field) throws IllegalAccessException {
    if(!Modifier.isFinal(field.getModifiers())) {
      field.set(obj, null);
    }
  }

  private boolean isPrimitiveOrWrapper(Class fieldType)  {
    return fieldType.isPrimitive()
        || fieldType.isAssignableFrom(Integer.class)
        || fieldType.isAssignableFrom(Boolean.class)
        || fieldType.isAssignableFrom(Byte.class)
        || fieldType.isAssignableFrom(Character.class)
        || fieldType.isAssignableFrom(Float.class)
        || fieldType.isAssignableFrom(Long.class)
        || fieldType.isAssignableFrom(Double.class)
        || fieldType.isAssignableFrom(Short.class);
  }

Answer 4

I used this strategy: i excluded every field which is not marked with @SerializedName annotation, i.e.:

public class Dummy {

    @SerializedName("VisibleValue")
    final String visibleValue;
    final String hiddenValue;

    public Dummy(String visibleValue, String hiddenValue) {
        this.visibleValue = visibleValue;
        this.hiddenValue = hiddenValue;
    }
}


public class SerializedNameOnlyStrategy implements ExclusionStrategy {

    @Override
    public boolean shouldSkipField(FieldAttributes f) {
        return f.getAnnotation(SerializedName.class) == null;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean shouldSkipClass(Class<?> clazz) {
        return false;
    }
}


Gson gson = new GsonBuilder()
                .setExclusionStrategies(new SerializedNameOnlyStrategy())
                .create();

Dummy dummy = new Dummy("I will see this","I will not see this");
String json = gson.toJson(dummy);

It returns

{"VisibleValue":"I will see this"}

Answer 5

Nishant provided a good solution, but there's an easier way. Simply mark the desired fields with the @Expose annotation, such as:

@Expose private Long id;

Leave out any fields that you do not want to serialize. Then just create your Gson object this way:

Gson gson = new GsonBuilder().excludeFieldsWithoutExposeAnnotation().create();

Answer 6

You can explore the json tree with gson.

Try something like this :

gson.toJsonTree(student).getAsJsonObject()
.get("country").getAsJsonObject().remove("name");

You can add some properties also :

gson.toJsonTree(student).getAsJsonObject().addProperty("isGoodStudent", false);

Tested with gson 2.2.4.