How do I disable fail_on_empty_beans in Jackson?

Question

Using jackson 2.1, how do I disable the fail_on_empty beans that the error message seems to want me to disable?

I'm assuming this is just the simplest thing in the world, but hell it is late and I haven't been able to find a simple tutorial or anything particularly obvious from the api. SerializationFactory? Why would they make it so unintuitive and then make the error message seem so straightforward?

Although I do like the error message, I mean, it is better than an NPE.

I'm assuming there is a way to do this using annotations - but I'm not keen on using them at all for the simplistic work I'm doing!

score 173 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:18

173

You can do this per class or globally, I believe.

For per class, try @JsonSerialize above class declaration.

For a mapper, here's one example:

ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
mapper.configure(SerializationFeature.FAIL_ON_EMPTY_BEANS, false);
// do various things, perhaps:
String someJsonString = mapper.writeValueAsString(someClassInstance);
SomeClass someClassInstance = mapper.readValue(someJsonString, SomeClass.class)

The StackOverflow link below also has an example for a Spring project.

For REST with Jersey, I don't remember off the top off my head, but I believe it's similar.

Couple of links I dug up: (edited 1st link due to Codehaus shutting down).

edited May 23 '17 at 12:18

Community

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answered Mar 07 '13 at 02:20

Pancakeo

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I used this one earlier today, has some more info, e.g. auto discovery. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4362104/strange-jackson-exception-being-thrown-when-serializing-hibernate-object – Pancakeo Mar 07 '13 at 02:21
1

Can you give an example on how to use `@JsonSerialize` to disable `FAIL_ON_EMPTY_BEANS` on class declaration? – tuk Apr 01 '16 at 11:09
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Been a few years :). This might help: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12162413/jackson-use-jsonserialize-inclusion-non-null-except-for-one-class – Pancakeo Jul 09 '16 at 20:38
Or you can use the disable method of ObjectMapper class like "mapper.disable(SerializationFeature.FAIL_ON_EMPTY_BEANS)" – R Pidugu Mar 12 '18 at 12:54

score 90 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 27 '21 at 19:42

90

If you are using Spring Boot, you can set the following property in application.properties file. spring.jackson.serialization.FAIL_ON_EMPTY_BEANS=false

edited Jul 27 '21 at 19:42

TuGordoBello

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answered Aug 02 '18 at 09:28

abhishek jain

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Yep. Solved it. – Ojonugwa Jude Ochalifu Oct 01 '20 at 12:38
Works like a charm! – dyon048 Mar 31 '21 at 12:04
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Does not work in Spring Boot 2.7.5 – Radhesh Khanna Dec 27 '22 at 10:26

assaf.gov · Answer 3 · 2018-12-19T07:22:47.753

29

If you wish to get JSON object without any extra fields - please add this annotation to your class, it worked perfect for me.

@JsonIgnoreProperties({"hibernateLazyInitializer", "handler"})

You can also add in your application.properties file this row, but it will add an extra field to your JSON.

spring.jackson.serialization.FAIL_ON_EMPTY_BEANS=false

edited Dec 19 '18 at 07:22

answered Dec 19 '18 at 06:07

assaf.gov

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I was trying to return JSON from inside one of my controllers in my spring-boot REST app and this fix it for me. – ninjasense Feb 14 '19 at 04:27
The perfect way if you have a empty object! – Georgi Peev Nov 16 '19 at 23:14

score 26 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 07 '14 at 13:18

You can also get the same issue if your class doesn't contain any public methods/properties. I normally have dedicated DTOs for API requests and responses, declared public, but forgot in one case to make the methods public as well - which caused the "empty" bean in the first place.

score 11 · Answer 5 · answered Apr 13 '15 at 22:25

11

You can also probably annotate the class with @JsonIgnoreProperties(ignoreUnknown=true) to ignore the fields undefined in the class

answered Apr 13 '15 at 22:25

AllDayAmazing

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This will not work if the whole bean is actually null – maryoush Feb 21 '17 at 16:08

score 7 · Answer 6 · answered Mar 09 '20 at 12:18

In Jersey Rest Services just use the JacksonFeatures annotation ...

@JacksonFeatures(serializationDisable = {SerializationFeature.FAIL_ON_EMPTY_BEANS})
public Response getSomething() {
    Object entity = doSomething();
    return Response.ok(entity).build();
}

score 5 · Answer 7 · edited Aug 29 '19 at 06:47

5

T o fix this issue configure your JsonDataFormat class like below

ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
mapper.disable(SerializationFeature.FAIL_ON_EMPTY_BEANS);

which is almost equivalent to,

mapper.configure(SerializationConfig.Feature.FAIL_ON_EMPTY_BEANS, false);

edited Aug 29 '19 at 06:47

Coding world

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answered Mar 12 '18 at 12:53

R Pidugu

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score 5 · Answer 8 · answered Dec 10 '21 at 07:33

I don't fully understand the reason behind this exception, but for Spring Boot projects adding the following to the properties file works a treat

application.yml

spring:
  jackson:
   serialization:
     FAIL_ON_EMPTY_BEANS: false

application.properties

spring.jackson.serialization.FAIL_ON_EMPTY_BEANS = false

score 3 · Answer 9 · answered Jul 20 '15 at 12:21

3

In my case, I missed to write @JsonProperty annotation in one of the fields which was causing this error.

answered Jul 20 '15 at 12:21

Wahib Ul Haq

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score 3 · Answer 10 · answered Jan 12 '16 at 12:46

3

If you use org.codehaus.jackson.map.ObjectMapper, then pls. use the following lines

mapper.configure(SerializationConfig.Feature.FAIL_ON_EMPTY_BEANS, false);

answered Jan 12 '16 at 12:46

thangamanikasi

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score 2 · Answer 11 · answered Jan 27 '21 at 11:24

If it is a Spring App, just paste the code in config class

        @Bean
        public ObjectMapper getJacksonObjectMapper() {
            ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();
            objectMapper.findAndRegisterModules();
            objectMapper.configure(
                    com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.SerializationFeature.WRITE_DATES_AS_TIMESTAMPS, false);
            objectMapper.setSerializationInclusion(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL);
            objectMapper.configure(DeserializationFeature.FAIL_ON_UNKNOWN_PROPERTIES, false);
            return objectMapper;
        }

score 1 · Answer 12 · answered Dec 05 '16 at 01:48

Adding a solution here for a different problem, but one that manifests with the same error... Take care when constructing json on the fly (as api responses or whatever) to escape literal double quotes in your string members. You may be consuming your own malformed json.

score 1 · Answer 13 · edited Sep 18 '18 at 16:18

ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();

Hi,

When I use mapper.configure(SerializationFeature.FAIL_ON_EMPTY_BEANS, false)

My json object values come '' blank in angular page mean in response

Solved with the help of only below settings

mapper.setVisibility(mapper.getSerializationConfig().getDefaultVisibilityChecker().
withFieldVisibility(JsonAutoDetect.Visibility.ANY).withGetterVisibility(JsonAutoDetect.Visibility.NONE)
                .withSetterVisibility(JsonAutoDetect.Visibility.NONE)
                .withCreatorVisibility(JsonAutoDetect.Visibility.NONE));

score 1 · Answer 14 · answered Oct 27 '22 at 16:48

I get the same error when I return InvoiceDTO as a response to the client. The problem was when I used the bean (Customer) in the DTO (InvoiceDTO). So, to solve I changed the bean (Customer) to DTO (CustomerDTO) to disable serialization and it is worked fine.

score -1 · Answer 15 · answered Jul 22 '20 at 10:39

In my case I didnt need to disable it , rather I had to put this code on top of my class : (and this solved my issue)

    @JsonNaming(PropertyNamingStrategy.SnakeCaseStrategy.class)//this is what was added
    @Value //this was there already
    @Builder//this was there already

public class NameOfClass {
     //some code in here.
}

How do I disable fail_on_empty_beans in Jackson?

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