java - Deserialize to String or Object using Jackson

Question

I have an object that sometimes looks like this:

{
   "foo" : "bar",
   "fuzz" : "bla"
}

and sometimes looks like this:

{
   "foo" : { "value" : "bar", "baz": "asdf" },
   "fuzz" : { "thing" : "bla", "blip" : "asdf" }
}

these classes would look like:

public class Foo {
   String value;
   String baz;
}

public class Fuzz {
   String thing;
   String blip;
}

where the first cases are shorthand for the second ones. I would like to always deserialize into the second case.

Further - this is a pretty common pattern in our code, so I would like to be able to do the serialization in a generic manner, as there are other classes similar to Foo above that have the same pattern of using String as a syntactic sugar for a more complex object.

I'd imagine the code to use it would look something like this

public class Thing { 
  @JsonProperty("fuzz")
  Fuzz fuzz;

  @JsonProperty("foo")
  Foo foo;
}

How do I write a custom deserializer (or some other module) that generically handles both cases?

Answer 1

To make it generic we need to be able to specify name which we would like to set in object for JSON primitive. Some flexibility gives annotation approach. Let's define simple annotation:

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Target(ElementType.FIELD)
@interface JsonPrimitiveName {
    String value();
}

Name means: in case primitive will appear in JSON use value() to get property name for given primitive. It binds JSON primitive with POJO field. Simple deserialiser which handles JSON object and JSON primitive:

class PrimitiveOrPojoJsonDeserializer extends JsonDeserializer implements ContextualDeserializer {

    private String primitiveName;
    private JavaType type;

    @Override
    public Object deserialize(JsonParser p, DeserializationContext ctxt) throws IOException {
        JsonDeserializer<Object> deserializer = ctxt.findRootValueDeserializer(type);
        if (p.currentToken() == JsonToken.START_OBJECT) {
            return deserializer.deserialize(p, ctxt);
        } else if (p.currentToken() == JsonToken.VALUE_STRING) {
            BeanDeserializer beanDeserializer = (BeanDeserializer) deserializer;
            try {
                Object instance = beanDeserializer.getValueInstantiator().getDefaultCreator().call();
                SettableBeanProperty property = beanDeserializer.findProperty(primitiveName);
                property.deserializeAndSet(p, ctxt, instance);
                return instance;
            } catch (Exception e) {
                throw JsonMappingException.from(p, e.getMessage());
            }
        }

        return null;
    }

    @Override
    public JsonDeserializer<?> createContextual(DeserializationContext ctxt, BeanProperty property) {
        JsonPrimitiveName annotation = property.getAnnotation(JsonPrimitiveName.class);

        PrimitiveOrPojoJsonDeserializer deserializer = new PrimitiveOrPojoJsonDeserializer();
        deserializer.primitiveName = annotation.value();
        deserializer.type = property.getType();

        return deserializer;
    }
}

Now we need to annotate POJO fields as below:

class Root {

    @JsonPrimitiveName("value")
    @JsonDeserialize(using = PrimitiveOrPojoJsonDeserializer.class)
    private Foo foo;

    @JsonPrimitiveName("thing")
    @JsonDeserialize(using = PrimitiveOrPojoJsonDeserializer.class)
    private Fuzz fuzz;

    // getters, setters
}

I assume that all classes are POJO-s and follow all rules - have getters, setters and default constructor. In case constructor does not exist you need to change this beanDeserializer.getValueInstantiator().getDefaultCreator().call() line somehow which fits your requirements.

Example app:

import com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParser;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonToken;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.BeanProperty;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.DeserializationContext;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.JavaType;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.JsonDeserializer;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.JsonMappingException;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.annotation.JsonDeserialize;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.BeanDeserializer;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.ContextualDeserializer;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.SettableBeanProperty;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.lang.annotation.ElementType;
import java.lang.annotation.Retention;
import java.lang.annotation.RetentionPolicy;
import java.lang.annotation.Target;

public class JsonApp {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        File jsonFile = new File("./resource/test.json").getAbsoluteFile();

        ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
        System.out.println(mapper.readValue(jsonFile, Root.class));
    }
}

Prints for shortened JSON:

Root{foo=Foo{value='bar', baz='null'}, fuzz=Fuzz{thing='bla', blip='null'}}

And for full JSON payload:

Root{foo=Foo{value='bar', baz='asdf'}, fuzz=Fuzz{thing='bla', blip='asdf'}}