How to ignore a class during the serialization using Jackson in Java?

The Jackson @JsonIgnoreType annotation can be used to ignore a class during the serialization process and it can mark all the properties or fields of a class to be ignored while serializing and deserializing a JSON object.

Syntax

@Target(value={ANNOTATION_TYPE,TYPE})
@Retention(value=RUNTIME)
public @interface JsonIgnoreType

Example

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.*;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.core.*;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.*;
import java.io.*;
public class JsonIgnoreTypeTest {
   public static void main(String args[]) throws IOException {
      Employee emp = new Employee();
      ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
      String jsonString = mapper.writerWithDefaultPrettyPrinter().writeValueAsString(emp);
      System.out.println(jsonString);
   }
}
// Employee class
class Employee {
   @JsonIgnoreType
   public static class Address {
      public String firstLine = null;
      public String secondLine= null;
      public String thirdLine = null;
      @Override
      public String toString() {
         return "Address{" +
                "firstLine='" + firstLine+ '\'' +
                ", secondLine='" + secondLine+ '\'' +
                ", thirdLine='" + thirdLine + '\'' +
                '}';
      }
   } // end of Address class
   public long empId = 115;
   public String empName = "Raja Ramesh";
   public Address empAddress = new Address();
   @Override
   public String toString() {
      return "Employee{" +
             "empId=" + empId +
             ", empName='" + empName + '\'' +
             ", empAddress=" + empAddress +
             '}';
   }
}

Output

{
   "empId" : 115,
   "empName" : "Raja Ramesh"
}