java - Jackson: deserializing null Strings as empty Strings

Question

I have the following class, that is mapped by Jackson (simplified version):

public class POI {
    @JsonProperty("name")
    private String name;
}

In some cases the server returns "name": null and I would like to then set name to empty Java String.

Is there any Jackson annotation or should I just check for the null inside my getter and return empty string if the property is null?

Answer 1

Again, this answer is for the SO users who happen to stumble upon this thread.

While the accepted answer stands accepted and valid in all its sense - it did not help me in the case where the decision to set null string values to empty string came only after we made our services available to iOS clients.

So, around 30-40 pojo's(increasing) and initializing them while instantiating the object in question or at the point of declaration was too much.

Here's how we did it.

public class CustomSerializerProvider extends DefaultSerializerProvider {

    public CustomSerializerProvider() {
        super();
    }

    public CustomSerializerProvider(CustomSerializerProvider provider, SerializationConfig config,
            SerializerFactory jsf) {
        super(provider, config, jsf);
    }

    @Override
    public CustomSerializerProvider createInstance(SerializationConfig config, SerializerFactory jsf) {
        return new CustomSerializerProvider(this, config, jsf);
    }

    @Override
    public JsonSerializer<Object> findNullValueSerializer(BeanProperty property) throws JsonMappingException {
        if (property.getType().getRawClass().equals(String.class))
            return Serializers.EMPTY_STRING_SERIALIZER_INSTANCE;
        else
            return super.findNullValueSerializer(property);
    }
}

And, the serializer

public class Serializers extends JsonSerializer<Object> {
    public static final JsonSerializer<Object> EMPTY_STRING_SERIALIZER_INSTANCE = new EmptyStringSerializer();

    public Serializers() {}

    @Override
    public void serialize(Object o, JsonGenerator jsonGenerator, SerializerProvider serializerProvider)
            throws IOException, JsonProcessingException {
        jsonGenerator.writeString("");
    }

    private static class EmptyStringSerializer extends JsonSerializer<Object> {
        public EmptyStringSerializer() {}

        @Override
        public void serialize(Object o, JsonGenerator jsonGenerator, SerializerProvider serializerProvider)
                throws IOException, JsonProcessingException {
            jsonGenerator.writeString("");
        }
    }
}

And, then set the serializer in the ObjectMapper. (Jackson 2.7.4)

ObjectMapper nullMapper = new ObjectMapper();
nullMapper.setSerializerProvider(new CustomSerializerProvider());

Hoping, this will save someone some time.