With jackson, how to serialize only some property of an ebean object when it is part of another object

Question

I have an API I can call to get some Json objects. Let's say I have two kind of objects : A and B .

an A objects have a B object amongst its instance variables. When I call my API to get someB, I want the following result :

{
  id: 234,
  name: theBName,
  colour: theBColour,
  size: 123
}

but when I call my API to get someA, I want the following result :

{
  id: 456,
  type: someAType,
  b: {
    id: 234,
    name: theBName
  }
}

As you can see, my B object only have parts of its properties in the second case.

I have found how to serialize some proporties and not others using jsonViews . I also know how to serialize an object as only its id when serialized as part of another object by adding :

 @JsonIdentityInfo(generator = ObjectIdGenerators.PropertyGenerator.class, property = "id")
 @JsonIdentityReference(alwaysAsId = true)
 public B someB;

to my A object.

But for the life of me, i can't figure out how to serialize this B object as its id AND other properties of my choice when, and only when, it is serialized as part of an A object.

I am looking for something like an annotation like this :

@serialiazeUsingOnlyProperties({"property1", "property2"})
public B someB;

to put in my A object.

Answer 1

You can use @JsonIgnoreProperties. The annotation is commonly used at the class level but it applies to fields as well. when applied to a field, it is used to ignore properties inside the annotated field:

@JsonIgnoreProperties({"colour", "size"})
public B someB;