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javajacksonjackson-dataformat-yaml

Jackson + YAML for Not A Number (.NAN)


Per the YAML spec, Not-a-number is represented as .NAN https://yaml.org/refcard.html

However, when deserialized with jackson-dataformats-text's YAMLMapper, we get:

Malformed numeric value '.NAN'

How do you tell an ObjectMapper to accept a given string as a representing null without diving into custom deserializers? Or is there a YAML-specific feature I should be enabling?

If you use NULL, it works on the Jackson side, but then it's no longer valid YAML and schema-aware editors like VS Code know it, which is confusing to end users:

VS code failing to validate null


Solution

  • I've solved this by bypassing the YAMLMapper and going to SnakeYAML's Yaml directly. I did this to fix the issue of Jackson not resolving anchors, but then I realized it also solved the .NaN/null problem as well- .NaNs are now parsed correctly as Double.NaN

    static final Yaml YAML = new Yaml();
    static final ObjectMapper MAPPER = new ObjectMapper();
    ...
    
    // Use SnakeYAML directly to resolve anchors and handle .NaN
    protected static <T> T load(Path p, Class<T> cls) throws IOException {
        val yaml = YAML.load(Files.newInputStream(p));
        return MAPPER.treeToValue(MAPPER.valueToTree(yaml), cls);
    }