Jackson Annotations - @JsonIgnoreType

Overview

@JsonIgnoreType annotation is used at mark a property of special type to be ignored.

Example - Serialization without using @JsonIgnoreType

JacksonTester.java

package com.tutorialspoint;

import java.io.IOException;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonIgnoreProperties;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;

public class JacksonTester {
   public static void main(String args[]) {
      ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
      try {
         Student student = new Student(1,11,"1ab","Mark");       
         String jsonString = mapper
            .writerWithDefaultPrettyPrinter()
            .writeValueAsString(student);
         System.out.println(jsonString);
      }
      catch (IOException e) { 
         e.printStackTrace();
      }   
   }
}
class Student {
   public int id;
   public String systemId;
   public int rollNo;
   public String name;

   Student(int id, int rollNo, String systemId, String name){
      this.id = id;
      this.systemId = systemId;
      this.rollNo = rollNo;
      this.name = name;
   }
}

Output

Run the JacksonTester and verify the output −

{
  "id" : 1,
  "systemId" : "1ab",
  "rollNo" : 11,
  "nameObj" : {
    "name" : "Mark"
  }
}

Example - Serialization with @JsonIgnoreType

JacksonTester.java

package com.tutorialspoint;

import java.io.IOException;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonIgnoreType;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;

public class JacksonTester {
   public static void main(String args[]){
      ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
      try {
         Student student = new Student(1,11,"1ab","Mark");       
         String jsonString = mapper
            .writerWithDefaultPrettyPrinter()
            .writeValueAsString(student);
         System.out.println(jsonString);
      }
      catch (IOException e) { 
         e.printStackTrace();
      }     
   }
}
class Student { 
   public int id;
   public String systemId;
   public int rollNo;
   public Name nameObj;

   Student(int id, int rollNo, String systemId, String name){
      this.id = id;
      this.systemId = systemId;
      this.rollNo = rollNo;
      nameObj = new Name(name);
   }

   @JsonIgnoreType
   class Name {
      public String name;
      Name(String name){
         this.name = name;
      }       
   }
}

Output

Run the JacksonTester and verify the output −

{
  "id" : 1,
  "systemId" : "1ab",
  "rollNo" : 11
}

Here we can see, without using @JsonIgnoreType, Jackson is serializing all values by default including an inner class. Using @JsonIgnoreType we can define the properties of certain type which are to be ignored during serialization.