Java 8 LocalDate Jackson format

Question

I was never able to get this to work simple using annotations. To get it to work, I created a ContextResolver for ObjectMapper, then I added the JSR310Module (update: now it is JavaTimeModule instead), along with one more caveat, which was the need to set write-date-as-timestamp to false. See more at the documentation for the JSR310 module. Here's an example of what I used.

Dependency

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackson-datatype-jsr310</artifactId>
    <version>2.4.0</version>
</dependency>

^{Note: One problem I faced with this is that the jackson-annotation version pulled in by another dependency, used version 2.3.2, which cancelled out the 2.4 required by the jsr310. What happened was I got a NoClassDefFound for ObjectIdResolver, which is a 2.4 class. So I just needed to line up the included dependency versions}

ContextResolver

import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.SerializationFeature;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype.jsr310.JSR310Module;
import javax.ws.rs.ext.ContextResolver;
import javax.ws.rs.ext.Provider;

@Provider
public class ObjectMapperContextResolver implements ContextResolver<ObjectMapper> {  
    private final ObjectMapper MAPPER;

    public ObjectMapperContextResolver() {
        MAPPER = new ObjectMapper();
        // Now you should use JavaTimeModule instead
        MAPPER.registerModule(new JSR310Module());
        MAPPER.configure(SerializationFeature.WRITE_DATES_AS_TIMESTAMPS, false);
    }

    @Override
    public ObjectMapper getContext(Class<?> type) {
        return MAPPER;
    }  
}

Resource class

@Path("person")
public class LocalDateResource {

    @GET
    @Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
    public Response getPerson() {
        Person person = new Person();
        person.birthDate = LocalDate.now();
        return Response.ok(person).build();
    }

    @POST
    @Consumes(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
    public Response createPerson(Person person) {
        return Response.ok(
                DateTimeFormatter.ISO_DATE.format(person.birthDate)).build();
    }

    public static class Person {
        public LocalDate birthDate;
    }
}

Test

curl -v http://localhost:8080/api/person
Result: {"birthDate":"2015-03-01"}

curl -v -POST -H "Content-Type:application/json" -d "{\"birthDate\":\"2015-03-01\"}" http://localhost:8080/api/person
Result: 2015-03-01

---

See also here for JAXB solution.

UPDATE

The JSR310Module is deprecated as of version 2.7 of Jackson. Instead, you should register the module JavaTimeModule. It is still the same dependency.

@JsonSerialize and @JsonDeserialize worked fine for me. They eliminate the need to import the additional jsr310 module:

@JsonDeserialize(using = LocalDateDeserializer.class)  
@JsonSerialize(using = LocalDateSerializer.class)  
private LocalDate dateOfBirth;

Deserializer:

public class LocalDateDeserializer extends StdDeserializer<LocalDate> {

    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    protected LocalDateDeserializer() {
        super(LocalDate.class);
    }


    @Override
    public LocalDate deserialize(JsonParser jp, DeserializationContext ctxt)
            throws IOException, JsonProcessingException {
        return LocalDate.parse(jp.readValueAs(String.class));
    }

}

Serializer:

public class LocalDateSerializer extends StdSerializer<LocalDate> {

    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;

    public LocalDateSerializer(){
        super(LocalDate.class);
    }

    @Override
    public void serialize(LocalDate value, JsonGenerator gen, SerializerProvider sp) throws IOException, JsonProcessingException {
        gen.writeString(value.format(DateTimeFormatter.ISO_LOCAL_DATE));
    }
}

ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
mapper.registerModule(new JavaTimeModule());
mapper.configure(SerializationFeature.WRITE_DATES_AS_TIMESTAMPS, false);

In Spring Boot web app, with Jackson and JSR 310 version "2.8.5"

compile "com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-databind:2.8.5"
runtime "com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype:jackson-datatype-jsr310:2.8.5"

The @JsonFormat works:

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonFormat;

@JsonFormat(shape = JsonFormat.Shape.STRING, pattern = "yyyy-MM-dd")
private LocalDate birthDate;

The simplest solution (which supports deserialization and serialization as well) is

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonFormat;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.annotation.JsonDeserialize;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.annotation.JsonSerialize;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype.jsr310.deser.LocalDateDeserializer;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype.jsr310.ser.LocalDateSerializer;

@JsonFormat(shape = JsonFormat.Shape.STRING, pattern = "dd/MM/yyyy")
@JsonDeserialize(using = LocalDateDeserializer.class)
@JsonSerialize(using = LocalDateSerializer.class)
private LocalDate dateOfBirth;

---

While using the following dependencies in your project.

Maven

<dependency>
   <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
   <artifactId>jackson-databind</artifactId>
   <version>2.9.7</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
   <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype</groupId>
   <artifactId>jackson-datatype-jsr310</artifactId>
   <version>2.9.7</version>
</dependency>

Gradle

compile "com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-databind:2.9.7"
compile "com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype:jackson-datatype-jsr310:2.9.7"

No additional implementation of a ContextResolver, Serializer or Deserializer is required.

@JsonFormat(pattern = "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss")
@JsonSerialize(using = LocalDateTimeSerializer.class)
@JsonDeserialize(using = LocalDateTimeDeserializer.class)
private LocalDateTime createdDate;

Since LocalDateSerializer turns it into "[year,month,day]" (a json array) rather than "year-month-day" (a json string) by default, and since I don't want to require any special ObjectMapper setup (you can make LocalDateSerializer generate strings if you disable SerializationFeature.WRITE_DATES_AS_TIMESTAMPS but that requires additional setup to your ObjectMapper), I use the following:

imports:

import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ser.std.ToStringSerializer;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype.jsr310.deser.LocalDateDeserializer;

code:

// generates "yyyy-MM-dd" output
@JsonSerialize(using = ToStringSerializer.class)
// handles "yyyy-MM-dd" input just fine (note: "yyyy-M-d" format will not work)
@JsonDeserialize(using = LocalDateDeserializer.class)
private LocalDate localDate;

And now I can just use new ObjectMapper() to read and write my objects without any special setup.