Remove attribute from object

Question

I got a list that return from below db call.

List<employee> list = empolyeeRepository.findByEmployeeId(id);

List contains employee pojo class object. I want to remove one attribute let's say "employee bank account no" when returning from rest call.

@RequestMapping(value = "/employeeInformation/{id}", method = RequestMethod.GET, produces = MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE)
@Timed
public List<Employee> getEmployeeInformation(@PathVariable("id") String id) throws Exception {
    return empolyeeRepository.findByEmployeeId(id);
}

Is there any annotation or good practice to do that?

Answer 1

As it mentioned in comments above, you cant remove fields of compiled class at runtime. Assuming you have to exclude some field from generated json, there I see two options:

1. Create a class with fields you want to be present in resulting json, copy required values from original object to a new created. This approach is called view model and allows you to decorate some object's data, hiding sensitive data from being exposed.
2. Depending on implementation of your serializer there may be annotations to exclude fields. @JsonIgnore may be placed on getter method, if you are using Jackson (default in spring boot). Second aproach requires significant less code, but the first one is more flexible.

Answer 2

Try @JsonIgnore to ignore properties from serialization and de-serialization. Here is the link to the docs