Remove "_embedded" and "_links" from Spring Boot JSON Response

Question

I've created a basic Spring Boot application with Restful services using CrudRepository to interact with the DB.

The JSON response contains "_embedded" : { ... } and "_links" : { ... } which I don't want.

{
  "_embedded" : {
    "countries" : [
      {
        "name" : "Antarctica",
        "_links" : {
          "self" : {
            "href" : "http://localhost:8080/world/rest/countries/ATA"
          },
          "country" : {
            "href" : "http://localhost:8080/world/rest/countries/ATA"
          }
        }
      },
      ...
    ]
  }

How can I get rid of this structure and return my objects in a simple list? Is there some property or configuration that can be set to remove this from all responses?

I've added the property spring.hateoas.use-hal-as-default-json-media-type=false, didn't work.

Tried converting the result to a list manually, countries.forEach(countriesList::add);; no luck..

POJO Class to map objects

/* Package and Imports */

@Entity(name = "country")
public class Country {

    @Id
    private String code;

    private String name;
    private String continent;
    private String region;

    /* Getters, Setters and equals method below */
}

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23264044/disable-hypertext-application-language-hal-in-json/53750814#53750814 — Michał Krzywański, Jul 27 '19 at 18:02
@michalk I did have a look at it. Is there no other simple way to do it? A configuration or annotation? — LearningDeveloper, Jul 27 '19 at 18:04
@LearningDeveloper, try this solution: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24421538/spring-data-rest-without-hateoas — Bor Laze, Jul 27 '19 at 18:58
@BorLaze Thanks for the link, the `spring-boot-starter-data-rest` seems to be the culprit. I might need to remove it and implement custom endpoints. Will keep this topic updated. — LearningDeveloper, Jul 27 '19 at 19:57

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 28 '19 at 03:54

After going through many topics on StackOverflow and other sites. I've come to the conclusion that I'm better off without the spring-boot-starter-data-rest.

I've removed the spring-boot-starter-data-rest dependency from my pom.xml.
Created a @RestController to handle requests.
Created methods to handle different request types (GET, POST, etc.)

As suggested by @michalk

Disable Hypertext Application Language (HAL) in JSON?

This does help partially but not for arrays.

Remove "_embedded" and "_links" from Spring Boot JSON Response

1 Answers1