Wanting to get Enum Value instead of name in JSON

Question

I've got the following enum:

public enum NotificationType {

    Store("S"),
    Employee("E"),
    Department("D"),
    All("A");

    public String value;

    NotificationType(String value) {
        this.value = value;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return this.value;
    }

    @JsonCreator
    public static NotificationType fromValue(String value) {
        for (NotificationType type : NotificationType.values()) {
            if (type.value.equals(value)) {
                return type;
            }
        }
        throw new IllegalArgumentException();
    }
}

I've created a converter so that when the enum is saved to the database, it persists the value (S, E, D or A) instead of the name. And I can POST json to the controller with the value and it binds to the object correctly.

However, when I render the JSON from a GET it is still displaying the name (Employee, Store, etc) and I would prefer that it still show the value.

Answer 1

Because your toString method returns the value you want to use to represent your enum, you can annotate it with @JsonValue to tell Jackson that the return value represents the value of the enum.