How to get around Jackson's inability to handle direct self-references in JPA beans

Question

So I am working on a RESTful data API using Java, Hibernate, JPA annotations, JAX-RS annotations, JAXB annotations, Jersey, and the Jackson JSON parser.

After trying

Answer 1

Jackson 1.x does not have specific support for resolving cyclic references, but there is support for handling parent/child style dependencies: this blog entry has more info.

Jackson 2.0 will have support for arbitrary Object Id / reference handling, using new @JsonIdentityInfo annotation, so perhaps that could be used to solve the problem. Official 2.0 release is not out yet, but release candidates (latest being RC2) are, in case you wanted to have a look. Not sure if it would handle your problem, but maybe it would help.

EDIT: Actually, Jackson JAXB annotation module will have support for @XmlID / @XmlIDREF for 2.0.0 -- this was just implemented, see here.