Spring Boot JSON

last modified July 28, 2023

Spring Boot JSON tutorial shows how to serve JSON data in a Spring Boot annotation.

Spring is a popular Java application framework and Spring Boot is an evolution of Spring that helps create stand-alone, production-grade Spring based applications easily.

JSON

JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight data-interchange format. It is easy for humans to read and write and for machines to parse and generate. The official Internet media type for JSON is application/json. The JSON filename extension is .json.

Spring Boot JSON

Spring Boot provides integration with three JSON mapping libraries:

Gson
Jackson
JSON-B

Jackson is the preferred and default library.

spring.http.converters.preferred-json-mapper=jsonb

The preferred JSON converter can be set with the spring.http.converters.preferred-json-mapper property.

Jackson

Jackson is a suite of data-processing tools for Java. It allows to read and write data in JSON, Avro, BSON, CBOR, CSV, Smile, (Java) Properties, Protobuf, XML or YAML format.

Jackson is auto-configured. It comes with the spring-boot-starter-json. When Jackson is on the classpath an ObjectMapper bean is automatically configured. The spring-boot-starter-json is pulled with the spring-boot-starter-web.

In Spring objects are automatically convered to JSON with the Jackson library. Spring can be configured to convert to XML as well.

spring.jackson.date-format= # For instance, `yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss`.
spring.jackson.default-property-inclusion= # including properties during serialization. 
spring.jackson.deserialization.*= # Jackson on/off features for deserialization.
spring.jackson.generator.*= # Jackson on/off features for generators.
spring.jackson.joda-date-time-format= # Joda date time format string.
spring.jackson.locale= # Locale used for formatting.
spring.jackson.mapper.*= # Jackson general purpose on/off features.
spring.jackson.parser.*= # Jackson on/off features for parsers.
spring.jackson.property-naming-strategy= # PropertyNamingStrategy.
spring.jackson.serialization.*= # Jackson on/off features for serialization.
spring.jackson.time-zone= #  Time zone
spring.jackson.visibility.*= # To limit which methods (and fields) are auto-detected.

Jackson can be configured with application properties.

@Configuration
public class WebConfig 
{
    @Bean
    public ObjectMapper customJson() {

        return new Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder()
            .indentOutput(true)
            .propertyNamingStrategy(PropertyNamingStrategy.UPPER_CAMEL_CASE)
            .build();
    }
}

Jackson can be configured with the Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder.

@Bean
public Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilderCustomizer customJson()
{
    return builder -> {

        builder.indentOutput(true);
        builder.propertyNamingStrategy(PropertyNamingStrategy.SNAKE_CASE);
    };
}

Existing configuration can be modified with the Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilderCustomizer.

Spring Boot JSON example

The following application return JSON data to the client. The Jackson is configured in three different ways.

build.gradle 
...
src
├───main
│   ├───java
│   │   └───com
│   │       └───zetcode
│   │           │   Application.java
│   │           ├───config
│   │           │       WebConfig.java
│   │           ├───controller
│   │           │       MyController.java
│   │           ├───model
│   │           │       City.java
│   │           └───service
│   │                   CityService.java
│   │                   ICityService.java
│   └───resources
│           application.yml
└── test
    ├── java
    └── resources

This is the project structure.

build.gradle

plugins {
    id 'org.springframework.boot' version '3.1.1'
    id 'io.spring.dependency-management' version '1.1.0'
    id 'java'
}

group = 'com.example'
version = '0.0.1-SNAPSHOT'
sourceCompatibility = '17'

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
    implementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-web'
}

This is the Gradle build.gradle file.

resources/application.yml

spring:
  main:
    log-startup-info: false

  jackson:
    property-naming-strategy: UPPER_CAMEL_CASE
    serialization:
      indent-output: true

In the application.yml file, we set Jackson properties. These settings can be overwritten or customized with the configuration beans.

com/zetcode/model/City.java

package com.zetcode.model;

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonIgnore;

import java.util.Objects;

public class City {

    @JsonIgnore
    private Long id;

    private String name;
    private int population;

    public City() {
    }

    public City(Long id, String name, int population) {

        this.id = id;
        this.name = name;
        this.population = population;
    }

    public Long getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public int getPopulation() {
        return population;
    }

    public void setPopulation(int population) {
        this.population = population;
    }

    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        int hash = 7;
        hash = 79 * hash + Objects.hashCode(this.id);
        hash = 79 * hash + Objects.hashCode(this.name);
        hash = 79 * hash + this.population;
        return hash;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object obj) {
        if (this == obj) {
            return true;
        }
        if (obj == null) {
            return false;
        }
        if (getClass() != obj.getClass()) {
            return false;
        }
        final City other = (City) obj;
        if (this.population != other.population) {
            return false;
        }
        if (!Objects.equals(this.name, other.name)) {
            return false;
        }
        return Objects.equals(this.id, other.id);
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        final StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder("City{");
        sb.append("id=").append(id);
        sb.append(", name='").append(name).append('\'');
        sb.append(", population=").append(population);
        sb.append('}');
        return sb.toString();
    }
}

We have a City model class.

@JsonIgnore
private Long id;

With the @JsonIgnore, we remove the id from JSON serialization.

com/zetcode/service/ICityService.java

package com.zetcode.service;

import com.zetcode.model.City;

import java.util.List;

public interface ICityService {

    List<City> getCities();
}

The ICityService contains the getCities contract method.

com/zetcode/service/CityService.java

package com.zetcode.service;

import com.zetcode.model.City;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Service;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

@Service
public class CityService implements ICityService {

    public List<City> getCities() {

        List<City> cities = new ArrayList<>();

        cities.add(new City(1L, "Bratislava", 432000));
        cities.add(new City(2L, "Budapest", 1759000));
        cities.add(new City(3L, "Prague", 1280000));
        cities.add(new City(4L, "Warsaw", 1748000));
        cities.add(new City(5L, "Los Angeles", 3971000));
        cities.add(new City(6L, "New York", 8550000));
        cities.add(new City(7L, "Edinburgh", 464000));
        cities.add(new City(8L, "Berlin", 3671000));

        return cities;
    }
}

The CityService returns a list of city objects. We do not use a database to make the example simpler.

com/zetcode/config/WebConfig.java

package com.zetcode.config;

import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.PropertyNamingStrategies;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.jackson.Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilderCustomizer;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.http.converter.json.Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder;

@Configuration
public class WebConfig {

    //    @Bean
    public ObjectMapper configureJson() {
        return new Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder()
                .indentOutput(true)
                .propertyNamingStrategy(PropertyNamingStrategies.UPPER_CAMEL_CASE)
                .build();
    }

    @Bean
    public Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilderCustomizer customizeJson() {
        return builder -> {

            builder.indentOutput(true);
            builder.propertyNamingStrategy(PropertyNamingStrategies.UPPER_CAMEL_CASE);
        };
    }
}

In WebConfig, we have beans that overwrite and customize Jackson settings. Play with the different settings and see how they are applied. Enable or disable the beans (by commenting the @Bean) and compare the outcome.

com/zetcode/controller/MyController.java

package com.zetcode.controller;

import com.zetcode.model.City;
import com.zetcode.service.ICityService;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.GetMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;

import java.util.List;

@RestController
public class MyController {

    private final ICityService cityService;

    public MyController(ICityService cityService) {
        this.cityService = cityService;
    }

    @GetMapping("/cities")
    public List<City> getCities() {

        return cityService.getCities();
    }
}

In order to write data to the response body, we use the @RestController or the @Controller/@ResponseBody combination.

@GetMapping("/cities")
public List<City> getCities() {

    return cityService.getCities();
}

The getCities method returns a list of city objects. The objects are automatically serialized into JSON.

com/zetcode/Application.java

package com.zetcode;

import org.springframework.boot.SpringApplication;
import org.springframework.boot.autoconfigure.SpringBootApplication;

@SpringBootApplication
public class Application  {
    
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
    }
}

Application is the entry point which sets up Spring Boot application.

We run the application with ./gradlew bootRun.

$ curl localhost:8080/cities
[ {
  "Name" : "Bratislava",
  "Population" : 432000
}, {
  "Name" : "Budapest",
  "Population" : 1759000
}, {
  "Name" : "Prague",
  "Population" : 1280000
}, {
  "Name" : "Warsaw",
  "Population" : 1748000
}, {
  "Name" : "Los Angeles",
  "Population" : 3971000
}, {
  "Name" : "New York",
  "Population" : 8550000
}, {
  "Name" : "Edinburgh",
  "Population" : 464000
}, {
  "Name" : "Berlin",
  "Population" : 3671000
} ]

This is a sample output. The JSON data is indented and the property naming strategy is UPPER_CAMEL_CASE.

In this article we have shown how to serve JSON data to the client in a Spring Boot application.

Author

My name is Jan Bodnar, and I am a passionate programmer with extensive programming experience. I have been writing programming articles since 2007. To date, I have authored over 1,400 articles and 8 e-books. I possess more than ten years of experience in teaching programming.

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