jackson - json encoding of doubles with controlled precision

Question

I'm encoding a complex Map structure with arrays of double values. High precision is not important and output size is, so I'm trying to get the JSON tool (Jackson in this case) to serialize the double values using a provided DecimalFormat.

The following is my best shot, but this fails as the serializer is not picked by the object mapper to encode the array:

class MyTest
{
  public class MyDoubleSerializer extends JsonSerializer<double[]>
  {
    public void serialize(double[] value, JsonGenerator jgen, SerializerProvider provider) throws IOException, JsonProcessingException
    {
      for (double d : value)
      {
        jgen.writeStartArray();
        jgen.writeRaw( df.format( d ) );
        jgen.writeEndArray();
      }
    }
  }

  @Test
  public void test1() throws Exception
  {
    ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
    SimpleModule module = new SimpleModule("MyModule", new Version(0, 1, 0, "alpha"));
    module.addSerializer(double[].class, new MyDoubleSerializer());
    mapper.registerModule(module);

    Map<String, Object> data = new HashMap<String, Object>();
    double[] doubleList = { 1.1111111111D, (double) (System.currentTimeMillis()) };
    data.put( "test", doubleList );
    System.out.print( mapper.writeValueAsString( data ));
  }
}

The output is:

{"test":[1.1111111111,1.315143204964E12}

What I was looking for:

{"test":[1.32E12, 1.11E0]}

Any ideas?

Also, I don't like having to generate a String and write is as raw - is there I could feed a StringBuffer into into DecimalFormat to do this?

Thanks

Answer 1

Managed to resolve this, by borrowing from the built-in serializer for Double.

It's a bit of a hack, because writeRaw() doesn't care about the context and doesn't write a comma between array members, so I'm casting the Json writer and calling its writeValue() method to handle this.

Strangely enough, this does not work on the example in the question (again doesn't get called for serializing these doubles), but does work on my real-world object which is more complex.

Enjoy...

public class JacksonDoubleArrayTest
{
    private DecimalFormat df = new DecimalFormat( "0.##E0" );

    public class MyDoubleSerializer extends org.codehaus.jackson.map.ser.ScalarSerializerBase<Double>
    {
        protected MyDoubleSerializer()
        {
            super( Double.class );
        }

        @Override
        public final void serializeWithType( Double value, JsonGenerator jgen, SerializerProvider provider, TypeSerializer typeSer ) throws IOException,
                JsonGenerationException
        {
            serialize( value, jgen, provider );
        }

        @Override
        public void serialize( Double value, JsonGenerator jgen, SerializerProvider provider ) throws IOException, JsonGenerationException
        {
            if ( Double.isNaN( value ) || Double.isInfinite( value ) )
            {
                jgen.writeNumber( 0 ); // For lack of a better alternative in JSON
                return;
            }

            String x = df.format( value );
            if ( x.endsWith( "E0" ) )
            {
                x = x.substring( 0, x.length() - 2 );
            }
            else if ( x.endsWith( "E1" ) && x.length() == 6 )
            {
                x = "" + x.charAt( 0 ) + x.charAt( 2 ) + '.' + x.charAt( 3 );
            }
            JsonWriteContext ctx = (JsonWriteContext)jgen.getOutputContext();
            ctx.writeValue();
            if ( jgen.getOutputContext().getCurrentIndex() > 0 )
            {
                x = "," + x;
            }
            jgen.writeRaw( x );
        }

        @Override
        public JsonNode getSchema( SerializerProvider provider, Type typeHint )
        {
            return createSchemaNode( "number", true );
        }
    }

    @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
    private static Map<String, Object> load() throws JsonParseException, JsonMappingException, IOException
    {
        ObjectMapper loader = new ObjectMapper();
        return (Map<String, Object>)loader.readValue( new File( "x.json" ), Map.class );
    }

    @Test
    public void test1() throws JsonGenerationException, JsonMappingException, IOException
    {
        ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
        SimpleModule module = new SimpleModule( "StatsModule", new Version( 0, 1, 0, "alpha" ) );
        module.addSerializer( Double.class, new MyDoubleSerializer() );
        mapper.registerModule( module );
        String out = mapper.writeValueAsString( load() );
        // System.out.println( out.length() );
    }
}