@JsonSerialize / @JsonDeserialize not invoked with Spring MVC

Question

I have a Spring 3.1 MVC project, and I'm having trouble deserializing a request sent to the following controller method:

@RequestMapping(value="/deposit",method=RequestMethod.POST)
public void deposit(@RequestBody DepositRequest request)
{
}

The request object which contains a Joda Money value, which I've registered a custom serializer/deserializer for:

public class DepositRequest {
    private Money amount;
    @JsonDeserialize(using=JodaMoneyDeserializer.class)
    @JsonSerialize(using=JodaMoneySerializer.class)
    public Money getAmount() {
        return amount;
    }
    public void setAmount(Money amount) {
        this.amount = amount;
    }
}

And the deserializer:

public class JodaMoneyDeserializer extends JsonDeserializer<Money> {

    @Override
    public Money deserialize(JsonParser parser, DeserializationContext context)
            throws IOException, JsonProcessingException {
        String text = parser.getText();
        return Money.parse(text);
    }
}

However, this deserializer is never invoked. When I send the following JSON, I get a 400 - Bad Request response, which I assume indicates that the mapper wasn't found.

{
    "amount" : "30AUD"
}

Do I need to tell Spring about this mapper somehow, or is the annotation enough? What other steps should I be taking to get the deserialization to work?

Answer 1

According to the Javadoc of JsonDeserialize you should use that annotation on the setter, not the getter (while JsonSerialize should indeed be on the getter).

Answer 2

You could also attach your deserializer/serializer to amount field:

@JsonDeserialize(using=JodaMoneyDeserializer.class)
@JsonSerialize(using=JodaMoneySerializer.class)
private Money amount;

public Money getAmount() {
    return amount;
}

public void setAmount(Money amount) {
    this.amount = amount;
}