Jersey/JAXB: Use same POJO for HTTP POST and GET, but return only a subset of the properties for GET in JSON response.

java, jax-rs, jaxb, jersey, json

Solution

You could always return a partially populated `User` object as by default null values are not marshalled. You may even be able to implement this in your `retrieveUserFromDB` method to avoid the copy step.

  @GET
  @Produces({MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON, MediaType.APPLICATION_XML})
  public Response getUser(String Id) {
    // Pseudo-code for retrieving user
    User userFromDB = retrieveUserFromDB(user);
    User user = new User();
    user.setUserName(userFromDB.getUserName());
    user.setUserEmail(userFromDB.getUserEmail());
    Response.status(200).entity(user);
  }

For More Information

- http://blog.bdoughan.com/2012/04/binding-to-json-xml-handling-null.html

Problem

This seems like another fairly simple thing to do, but I'm again struggling on how to do it. I have a POJO, with Jersey/JAXB annotations that has HTTP POST and GET methods associated to it. When doing POST on the POJO, the request body is sent as a JSON, essentially modeling the POJO. When doing GET, I want to return the POJO, but with only a subset of the POJO properties. I tried using @XmlTransient on the properties I don't want for the GET, but then I cannot use those properties during the HTTP POST. First, here is my POJO (User.java) ``` import javax.xml.bind.annotation.* @XmlRootElement public class User { private String userName; private String userEmail; private String userType; // Do not return this property in GET private String userTmpPassword; // Do not return this property in GET // User constructor public User(String userName,...) { this.userName = userName; //...etc... } // getters and setters with @XmlElement on each attribute //...etc... @XmlElement(name="user_name") public String getUserName() { return userName; } public String setUserName() { return userName; } //...etc... } ``` Here is my RESTful service class: ``` public class userService{ @POST @Produces({MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON, MediaType.APPLICATION_XML}) public Response getUser(User userInfoAsJSON) { User user = new User(userInfoAsJSON.getUserName(), ...); // pseudo-code for persisting User writeUserToDB(user); return Response.status(200); } @GET @Produces({MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON, MediaType.APPLICATION_XML}) public Response getUser(String Id) { // Pseudo-code for retrieving user User user = retrieveUserFromDB(user); Response.status(200).entity(user); } } ``` As expected, my JSON response for the HTTP GET returns all the properties of User, like this: ``` { "user_name": "John Doe", "user_email": "john_doe@johndoe.com", "user_type": "Admin", "user_tmp_password": "abc_xyz" } ``` Whereas, I would like to only return a couple attributes in the JSON response: ``` { "user_name": "John Doe", "user_email": "john_doe@johndoe.com" } ```

Original source