Jackson - Deserialize nested JSON

Question

I have a JSON string which will be of the following format:

{
  "response": { 
    "execution_status": "ready", 
    "report": {
      "cache_hit": true, 
      "created_on": "2013-07-29 08:42:42", 
      "fact_cache_error": null, 
      "fact_cache_hit": true, 
      "header_info": null, 
      "name": null, 
      "report_size": "5871", 
      "row_count": "33", 
      "url": "report-download?id=278641c223bc4e4d63df9e83d8fcb4e6"
     }, 
  "status": "OK"
  }
}

The response part of the JSON is common for a bunch of response types. The report part of this JSON holds good only for this response. So I had created a Response class as shown below with getters and setters (have not included the getters and setters here for brevity):

@JsonRootName(value = "response")
public class Response implements Serializable {

    private static final long serialVersionUID = -2597493920293381637L;

    @JsonProperty(value = "error")
    private String error;
    @JsonProperty(value = "error_code")
    private String errorCode;
    @JsonProperty(value = "error_id")
    private String errorId;
    @JsonProperty(value = "error_description")
    private String errorDescription;
    @JsonProperty(value = "method")
    private String method;
    @JsonProperty(value = "service")
    private String service;
    @JsonProperty(value = "status")
    private String status;
    @JsonProperty(value = "execution_status")
    private String executionStatus;
}

And then, I created a Report class with the fields in the report element as below. The ReportResponse class will extend from the Response class (again the getters and setters are not included for brevity):

public class ReportResponse extends Response {

    private static final long serialVersionUID = 4950819240030644407L;

    @JsonProperty(value = "cache_hit")
    private Boolean cacheHit;
    @JsonProperty(value = "created_on")
    private Timestamp createdOn;
    @JsonProperty(value = "fact_cache_error")
    private String factCacheError;
    @JsonProperty(value = "fact_cache_hit")
    private Boolean factCacheHit;
    @JsonProperty(value = "header_info")
    private String headerInfo;
    @JsonProperty(value = "json_request")
    private String jsonRequest;
    @JsonProperty(value = "name")
    private String name;
    @JsonProperty(value = "report_size")
    private Integer reportSize;
    @JsonProperty(value = "row_count")
    private Integer rowCount;
    @JsonProperty(value = "url")
    private String url;
}

Now when I use the ObjectMapper to map to the ReportResponse object, I get the following error:

String jsonString = "{\"response\": {\"execution_status\": \"ready\", \"report\":   {\"cache_hit\": true, \"created_on\": \"2013-07-29 09:53:44\", \"fact_cache_error\": null, \"fact_cache_hit\": false, \"header_info\": null, \"name\": null, \"report_size\": \"5871\", \"row_count\": \"33\", \"url\": \"report-download?id=2ff62c07fc3653b68f2073e7c1aa0517\"}, \"status\": \"OK\"}}";
ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
ReportResponse reportResponse = mapper.readValue(jsonString, ReportResponse.class);

Caused by: com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.UnrecognizedPropertyException: Unrecognized field "report"

I know that I can create a separate Report class and then embed it in the ReportResponse with the @JsonProperty anotation. Is there a way I can avoid that and mark the ReportResponse class with an annotation which would map it to the "report" element in the JSON?

Answer 1

There is no annotation which could handle this case yet. There is a ticket requesting this feature.

Here is a brief statement from one of the owners regarding this topic.

Quote from the mentioned statement:

Tatu Saloranta: "… @JsonProperty does not support transformations, since the data binding is based on incremental parsing and does not have access to full tree representation. Supporting @JsonUnwrapped was non-trivial, but doable; and thus converse ("@JsonWrapped") would be doable, theoretically speaking. Just plenty of work. …"