java - GSON equivalent for @JsonIgnoreProperties in Jackson

Question

In Jackson you can ignore the properties by giving annotation @JsonIgnoreProperties at class level and the properties which are not in the actual JSON are not serialized/deserialized from/to the Java class. What is the equivalent of it if we are using GSON?

Answer 1

You can get a similar effect with the GSON @Expose annotation using GsonBuilder.excludeFieldsWithoutExposeAnnotation().

E.g.

 public class User {
     @Expose private String firstName;
     @Expose(serialize = false) private String lastName;
     @Expose (serialize = false, deserialize = false) private String emailAddress;
     private String password;
 }

If you use Gson gson = new GsonBuilder().excludeFieldsWithoutExposeAnnotation().create() with the above class, then the toJson() and fromJson() methods will completely ignore the password field as it doesn't have an @Expose annotation.

(Note you also get finer-grained control here as you can control whether GSON serializes/deserializes fields as well).

Reference: https://github.com/google/gson/blob/master/UserGuide.md#TOC-Gson-s-Expose