Spring Boot 2.5.0 and InvalidDefinitionException: Java 8 date/time type `java.time.Instant` not supported by default

Question

After update from Spring Boot 2.4.5 to Spring 2.5.0 I noticed the following exceptions in the application logs:

Caused by: com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.InvalidDefinitionException: Java 8 date/time type `java.time.Instant` not supported by default: add Module "com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype:jackson-datatype-jsr310" to enable handling (through reference chain: org.telegram.telegrambots.meta.api.objects.Update["my_chat_member"]->org.telegram.telegrambots.meta.api.objects.ChatMemberUpdated["new_chat_member"]->org.telegram.telegrambots.meta.api.objects.ChatMember["untilDateAsInstant"])
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.InvalidDefinitionException.from(InvalidDefinitionException.java:77) ~[jackson-databind-2.12.3.jar!/:2.12.3]
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.SerializerProvider.reportBadDefinition(SerializerProvider.java:1276) ~[jackson-databind-2.12.3.jar!/:2.12.3]
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ser.impl.UnsupportedTypeSerializer.serialize(UnsupportedTypeSerializer.java:35) ~[jackson-databind-2.12.3.jar!/:2.12.3]
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ser.BeanPropertyWriter.serializeAsField(BeanPropertyWriter.java:728) ~[jackson-databind-2.12.3.jar!/:2.12.3]
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ser.std.BeanSerializerBase.serializeFields(BeanSerializerBase.java:770) ~[jackson-databind-2.12.3.jar!/:2.12.3]
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ser.BeanSerializer.serialize(BeanSerializer.java:178) ~[jackson-databind-2.12.3.jar!/:2.12.3]
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ser.BeanPropertyWriter.serializeAsField(BeanPropertyWriter.java:728) ~[jackson-databind-2.12.3.jar!/:2.12.3]
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ser.std.BeanSerializerBase.serializeFields(BeanSerializerBase.java:770) ~[jackson-databind-2.12.3.jar!/:2.12.3]
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ser.BeanSerializer.serialize(BeanSerializer.java:178) ~[jackson-databind-2.12.3.jar!/:2.12.3]
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ser.BeanPropertyWriter.serializeAsField(BeanPropertyWriter.java:728) ~[jackson-databind-2.12.3.jar!/:2.12.3]
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ser.std.BeanSerializerBase.serializeFields(BeanSerializerBase.java:770) ~[jackson-databind-2.12.3.jar!/:2.12.3]
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ser.BeanSerializer.serialize(BeanSerializer.java:178) ~[jackson-databind-2.12.3.jar!/:2.12.3]
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ser.DefaultSerializerProvider._serialize(DefaultSerializerProvider.java:480) ~[jackson-databind-2.12.3.jar!/:2.12.3]
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ser.DefaultSerializerProvider.serializeValue(DefaultSerializerProvider.java:319) ~[jackson-databind-2.12.3.jar!/:2.12.3]
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectWriter$Prefetch.serialize(ObjectWriter.java:1514) ~[jackson-databind-2.12.3.jar!/:2.12.3]
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectWriter._writeValueAndClose(ObjectWriter.java:1215) ~[jackson-databind-2.12.3.jar!/:2.12.3]
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectWriter.writeValue(ObjectWriter.java:1059) ~[jackson-databind-2.12.3.jar!/:2.12.3]
    at org.springframework.jms.support.converter.MappingJackson2MessageConverter.mapToTextMessage(MappingJackson2MessageConverter.java:279) ~[spring-jms-5.3.7.jar!/:5.3.7]
    at org.springframework.jms.support.converter.MappingJackson2MessageConverter.toMessage(MappingJackson2MessageConverter.java:184) ~[spring-jms-5.3.7.jar!/:5.3.7]
    ... 37 common frames omitted

this is my pom.xml:

    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype</groupId>
        <artifactId>jackson-datatype-jsr310</artifactId>
    </dependency>

    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
        <artifactId>jackson-core</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
        <artifactId>jackson-annotations</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
        <artifactId>jackson-databind</artifactId>
    </dependency>

I reverted to Spring Boot 2.4.5 and not everything works fine. What may be wrong with Spring Boot 2.5.0 ?

Updated

The corresponding GitHub https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/issues/26859

Answer 1

I saw an issue in one of my test classes. The problem there was it was creating a new ObjectMapper instance that was not adding the JavaTimeModule.

Here is a sample test that works in Spring 2.4.5 but fails in 2.5.0/2.5.1 with com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.InvalidDefinitionException: Java 8 date/time type java.time.ZonedDateTime not supported by default

It might be due to the upgrade in the jackson-datatype-jsr310 version

package net.jpmchase.gti.gtfabric;

import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;

import java.time.ZonedDateTime;

public class ObjectMapperTest {

    @Test
    public void objectMapperTest() throws Exception{

        ZonedDateTime time = ZonedDateTime.now();
        ObjectMapper o = new ObjectMapper();
        o.writeValueAsString(time);
    }
}

To fix this particular test case had to add an explicit

ObjectMapper o = new ObjectMapper();
o.registerModule(new JavaTimeModule()); 

Answer 2

Perhaps you are not using in your code Object Mapper provided by spring.

Wrong way:

ObjectMapper o = new ObjectMapper();

Correct way:

@Autowired
Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder mapperBuilder;

...

ObjectMapper mapper = mapperBuilder.build();

Answer 3

In case you are using Spring Data Couchbase then this might be your problem: https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-data-couchbase/blame/4.2.x/src/main/java/org/springframework/data/couchbase/config/AbstractCouchbaseConfiguration.java#L309

The bug report is here: https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-data-couchbase/issues/1209

This has been fixed in Spring-Data-Couchbase 4.3

Answer 4

Posting a proper answer for the future me (that forgets):

@Configuration
public class JacksonConfig {

@Bean
public BatchConfigurer batchConfigurer(DataSource dataSource, PlatformTransactionManager transactionManager) {
    return new DefaultBatchConfigurer(dataSource) {
        @Override
        protected JobRepository createJobRepository() throws Exception {
            Jackson2ExecutionContextStringSerializer serializer = new Jackson2ExecutionContextStringSerializer();
            ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper().registerModule(new JavaTimeModule()).findAndRegisterModules();
            objectMapper.configure(DeserializationFeature.FAIL_ON_UNKNOWN_PROPERTIES, true);
            serializer.setObjectMapper(objectMapper);

            JobRepositoryFactoryBean factory = new JobRepositoryFactoryBean();
            factory.setDataSource(dataSource);
            factory.setTransactionManager(transactionManager);
            factory.setSerializer(serializer);
            return factory.getObject();
        }
    };
}

}

Source: https://docs.spring.io/spring-batch/docs/current/reference/html/job.html

Answer 5

While both Saifuddin Merchant and Dawid Świtoń-Maniakowski have provided different but equally working ways to make the library

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackson-datatype-jsr310</artifactId>
    <version>2.15.2</version>
</dependency>

actually work, my proposal is to remove it from your pom.xml completely and to write your own serializer (as an inner static class in this example):

public static class CustomDateSerializer extends com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ser.std.StdSerializer<LocalDateTime> {
        private static final long serialVersionUID = 4365897561L;
        public CustomDateSerializer() { 
            this(null); 
        } 
        public CustomDateSerializer(Class<LocalDateTime> t) {
            super(t); 
        }
        @Override
        public void serialize(
                LocalDateTime value, JsonGenerator gen, SerializerProvider arg2) 
          throws IOException, JsonProcessingException {
            gen.writeString(value.format(DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("dd-MM-yyyy hh:mm:ss")));
        }
    }

Next, annotate the time field of the object you want to serialize as JSON:

@JsonSerialize(using = CustomDateSerializer.class)
private LocalDateTime time = LocalDateTime.now();

Not much of code, right? The pom.xml dependency is 5 lines of code itself. But then autowiring Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder is 2 lines, or if you decide to go with registering new JavaTimeModule() then it would be much more lines of code since this JavaTimeModule provides inappropriate date time serialization (as an array of numbers!) out of the box, so you would be in need to wire your own formatter into this JavaTimeModule somehow... not what you want probably.

Watch out for the generic type of the custom serializer - it is suited for <LocalDateTime> here. Just modify it to fit your needs.