Jackson overcoming underscores in favor of camel-case

Question

You can configure the ObjectMapper to convert camel case to names with an underscore:

objectMapper.setPropertyNamingStrategy(PropertyNamingStrategy.SNAKE_CASE);

Or annotate a specific model class with this annotation:

@JsonNaming(PropertyNamingStrategy.SnakeCaseStrategy.class)

Before Jackson 2.7, the constant was named:

PropertyNamingStrategy.CAMEL_CASE_TO_LOWER_CASE_WITH_UNDERSCORES

If its a spring boot application, In application.properties file, just use

spring.jackson.property-naming-strategy=SNAKE_CASE

Or Annotate the model class with this annotation.

@JsonNaming(PropertyNamingStrategy.SnakeCaseStrategy.class)

You should use the @JsonProperty on the field you want to change the default name mapping.

class User{
    @JsonProperty("first_name")
    protected String firstName;
    protected String getFirstName(){return firstName;}
}

For more info: the API

If you want this for a Single Class, you can use the PropertyNamingStrategy with the @JsonNaming, something like this:

@JsonNaming(PropertyNamingStrategy.LowerCaseWithUnderscoresStrategy.class)
public static class Request {

    String businessName;
    String businessLegalName;

}

Will serialize to:

{
    "business_name" : "",
    "business_legal_name" : ""
}

Since Jackson 2.7 the LowerCaseWithUnderscoresStrategy in deprecated in favor of SnakeCaseStrategy, so you should use:

@JsonNaming(PropertyNamingStrategy.SnakeCaseStrategy.class)
public static class Request {

    String businessName;
    String businessLegalName;

}

The above answers regarding @JsonProperty and CAMEL_CASE_TO_LOWER_CASE_WITH_UNDERSCORES are 100% accurate, although some people (like me) might be trying to do this inside a Spring MVC application with code-based configuration. Here's sample code (that I have inside Beans.java) to achieve the desired effect:

@Bean
public ObjectMapper jacksonObjectMapper() {
    return new ObjectMapper().setPropertyNamingStrategy(
            PropertyNamingStrategy.CAMEL_CASE_TO_LOWER_CASE_WITH_UNDERSCORES);
}

The current best practice is to configure Jackson within the application.yml (or properties) file.

Example:

spring:
  jackson:
    property-naming-strategy: SNAKE_CASE

If you have more complex configuration requirements, you can also configure Jackson programmatically.

import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.PropertyNamingStrategy;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.http.converter.json.Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder;

@Configuration
public class JacksonConfiguration {

    @Bean
    public Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder() {
        return new Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder()
                .propertyNamingStrategy(PropertyNamingStrategy.SNAKE_CASE);
        // insert other configurations
    }

} 

There are few answers here indicating both strategies for 2 different versions of Jackson library below:

For Jackson 2.6.*

ObjectMapper objMapper = new ObjectMapper(new JsonFactory()); // or YAMLFactory()
objMapper.setNamingStrategy(
     PropertyNamingStrategy.CAMEL_CASE_TO_LOWER_CASE_WITH_UNDERSCORES);

For Jackson 2.7.*

ObjectMapper objMapper = new ObjectMapper(new JsonFactory()); // or YAMLFactory()
objMapper.setNamingStrategy(
     PropertyNamingStrategy.SNAKE_CASE);