java - Jackson JSON deserialization with multiple parameters constructor

Question

I've been using FasterXML/Jackson-Databind in my project for a while now, and all was working great, until I've discovered this post and started to use this approach to desserialize objects without the @JsonProperty annotations.

The problem is that when I have a constructor which take multiple parameters and decorate this constructor with the @JsonCreator annotation Jackson throw the following error:

Exception in thread "main" com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.JsonMappingException: 
Argument #0 of constructor [constructor for com.eliti.model.Cruiser, annotations: {interface com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonCreator=@com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonCreator(mode=DEFAULT)}] has no property name annotation; must have name when multiple-parameter constructor annotated as Creator
 at [Source: {
  "class" : "com.eliti.model.Cruiser",
  "inventor" : "afoaisf",
  "type" : "MeansTransport",
  "capacity" : 123,
  "maxSpeed" : 100
}; line: 1, column: 1]

I've created a little project to illustrate the problem, the class I'm trying to desserialize is this one:

public class Cruise extends WaterVehicle {

 private Integer maxSpeed;

  @JsonCreator
  public Cruise(String name, Integer maxSpeed) {
    super(name);
    System.out.println("Cruise.Cruise");
    this.maxSpeed = maxSpeed;
  }

  public Integer getMaxSpeed() {
    return maxSpeed;
  }

  public void setMaxSpeed(Integer maxSpeed) {
    this.maxSpeed = maxSpeed;
  }

}

And the code to desserialize is like this:

public class Test {
  public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
    Cruise cruise = new Cruise("asd", 100);
    cruise.setMaxSpeed(100);
    cruise.setCapacity(123);
    cruise.setInventor("afoaisf");

    ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper().enable(SerializationFeature.INDENT_OUTPUT);
    mapper.registerModule(new ParameterNamesModule(JsonCreator.Mode.PROPERTIES));

    String cruiseJson = mapper.writeValueAsString(cruise);

    System.out.println(cruiseJson);

    System.out.println(mapper.readValue(cruiseJson, Cruise.class));

}

I already tried to remove the @JsonCreator, but if I do so, the throws the following exception:

Exception in thread "main" com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.JsonMappingException: Can not construct instance of com.eliti.model.Cruise: no suitable constructor found, can not deserialize from Object value (missing default constructor or creator, or perhaps need to add/enable type information?)
 at [Source: {
  "class" : "com.eliti.model.Cruise",
  "inventor" : "afoaisf",
  "type" : "MeansTransport",
  "capacity" : 123,
  "maxSpeed" : 100
}; line: 3, column: 3]

I have tried to issue a "mvn clean install", but the problem persists.

Just to include some extra information, I've researched thoroughly about this problem (GitHub issues, Blog posts, StackOverflow Q&A). Here are some debbuging/investigation that I have been doing on my end:

Investigation 1

javap -v on the generated bytecode give me this:

 MethodParameters:
      Name                           Flags
      name
      maxSpeed

When talking about the constructor, so I guess that the -parameters flag is really being set for javac compiler.

Investigation 2

If I create a constructor with a single parameter the object gets initialized, but I want/need to use the multiple parameter constructor.

Investigation 3

If I use the annotation @JsonProperty on each field it works as well, but for my original project it is too much overhead since I have a lot of fields in the constructor (and also it gets very hard to refactor code with annotations).

The question that remain is: How can I make Jackson work with multiple parameter constructor without annotations?

Answer 1

You need to add the annotation @JsonProperty specifying the name of the json property that needs to be passed to the constructor when creating the object.

public class Cruise extends WaterVehicle {

 private Integer maxSpeed;

  @JsonCreator
  public Cruise(@JsonProperty("name") String name, @JsonProperty("maxSpeed")Integer maxSpeed) {
    super(name);
    System.out.println("Cruise.Cruise");
    this.maxSpeed = maxSpeed;
  }

  public Integer getMaxSpeed() {
    return maxSpeed;
  }

  public void setMaxSpeed(Integer maxSpeed) {
    this.maxSpeed = maxSpeed;
  }

}

EDIT

I just tested using the below code and it works for me

import java.io.IOException;

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonCreator.Mode;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.SerializationFeature;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.module.paramnames.ParameterNamesModule;

class WaterVehicle {

    private String name;
    private int capacity;
    private String inventor;
    public WaterVehicle(String name) {
        this.name=name;
    }
    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }
    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
    public int getCapacity() {
        return capacity;
    }
    public void setCapacity(int capacity) {
        this.capacity = capacity;
    }
    public String getInventor() {
        return inventor;
    }
    public void setInventor(String inventor) {
        this.inventor = inventor;
    }


}

 class Cruise  extends WaterVehicle{

        private Integer maxSpeed;

        public Cruise(String name, Integer maxSpeed) {
            super(name);
            this.maxSpeed = maxSpeed;
        }

        public Integer getMaxSpeed() {
            return maxSpeed;
        }

        public void setMaxSpeed(Integer maxSpeed) {
            this.maxSpeed = maxSpeed;
        }


    }

public class Test {
      public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        Cruise cruise = new Cruise("asd", 100);
        cruise.setMaxSpeed(100);
        cruise.setCapacity(123);
        cruise.setInventor("afoaisf");

        ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper().enable(SerializationFeature.INDENT_OUTPUT);
        mapper.registerModule(new ParameterNamesModule(Mode.PROPERTIES));

        String jsonString = mapper.writeValueAsString( cruise);
        System.out.println(jsonString);

        Cruise anotherCruise = mapper.readValue(jsonString, Cruise.class);
         System.out.println(anotherCruise );
         jsonString = mapper.writeValueAsString( anotherCruise );
         System.out.println(jsonString);

    }

}

It produces the following output

{
  "name" : "asd",
  "capacity" : 123,
  "inventor" : "afoaisf",
  "maxSpeed" : 100
}
Cruise@56f4468b
{
  "name" : "asd",
  "capacity" : 123,
  "inventor" : "afoaisf",
  "maxSpeed" : 100
}

Make sure you have the compilerArgs in the pom file.

<compilerArgs>
     <arg>-parameters</arg>
</compilerArgs>