Is it possible using Jersey/JAX-RS annotations to skip a class member when marshalling to XML/JSON?

Question

Pretty straightforward question. I am using Jersey to build a REST system. If I have a class with a value that I need to use during processing but don't want sent as part of the XML or JSON output when the class is marshaled, is there a way to ignore it? Something like:

@XmlRootElement(name="example") class Example {     private int a;     private String b;     private Object c;      @XmlElement(ignore=true)     public int getA() { return a; }     @XmlElement     public String getB() { return b; }     @Ignore     public Object getC() { return c; }     ... //setters, constructors, etc. } 

I would hope that something like the ignore=true over getA() or the @Ignore over getC() would work, but i can find no documentation.

Answer 1

There are couple options depending on how many fields/properties you want to be ignored.

Option #1 - @XmlTransient

If you want less than half of the properties to be ignored then I would recommend annotating them with @XmlTransient. This will exclude them from the XML mapping.

@XmlRootElement class Example {     private int a;     private String b;     private Object c;      @XmlTransient     public int getA() { return a; } // UNMAPPED      public String getB() { return b; } // MAPPED      @XmlTransient         public Object getC() { return c; } // UNMAPPED      ... //setters, constructors, etc. } 

Option #2 - @XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.NONE)

If you want more than half of the properties ignored I would recommend using the @XmlAccessorType annotation at the type level to set XmlAccessType.NONE. This will cause only annotated properties to be mapped to XML.

@XmlRootElement @XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.NONE) class Example {     private int a;     private String b;     private Object c;      public int getA() { return a; } // UNMAPPED      @XmlElement     public String getB() { return b; } // MAPPED      public Object getC() { return c; } // UNMAPPED      ... //setters, constructors, etc. } 

For More Information

• http://blog.bdoughan.com/2012/04/jaxb-and-unmapped-properties.html