Jersey

Single Element Arrays and JSON

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Charles Overbeck

Single Element Arrays and JSON

Hello,

Using Jersey/JAXB (Jersey version 1.1.5.1), I ran across an issue where the JSON representation of a l element List doesn't come back as an array, but if there are 2 or more elements, it does. In researching it, I came across these two links that discuss it:

http://forums.netbeans.org/post-68036.html

http://blogs.sun.com/enterprisetechtips/entry/configuring_json_for_restful_web

Is there any solution other than what is described in the above links? I currently have over 50 JAXB beans (they are actually generated from an XSD schema, but same difference). It seems sort of painful to have to go through them all and figure out which fields I have to specify as parameters to JSONConfiguration.mapped().arrays().

In addition what happens if I have the same field name used more than once, once where I want it to be an array, and once where I don't? Here is one of my generated JAXB beans:

@XmlType(name = "BillToLocationsType", propOrder = {
"billToLocation"
})
public class BillToLocationsType {

protected List<LocationType> billToLocation;

I guess I should name that field (or element, in the XSD) billToLocations. But since I don't, what happens if some other JAXBean with "protected LocationType billToLocation"? And then I have JSONConfiguration.mapped().arrays("billToLocation")?

BTW, the reason I have it this way is that my generated xml does come out how I want it:

I'll look into the naming some more.

I sort of digressed. The thing I most want to know is if there is another, easier way to have a single element JSON array generated, without having to manually look at every JAXB bean.

Thanks,

Charles

Charles Overbeck

Re: Single Element Arrays and JSON

I never got a reply to this. I'm not complaining; I realize nobody owes me a reply, and I do appreciate all the great support I've gotten here for my other questions. But I'm hoping this got overlooked due to JavaOne. :)

Is there really no other solution than to manually and explicitly specify which fields should be arrays via the JSONConfiguration.mapped.arrays()?

Thanks in advance,

Charles

P.S. Apologies in advance if this gets posted twice. It seemed like the newsgroup was down for several days; my first message from last Friday bounced back. So I'm posting a new one here.

From: Charles Overbeck <[hidden email]>
To: [hidden email]
Sent: Tue, September 14, 2010 2:00:45 PM
Subject: [Jersey] Single Element Arrays and JSON

Jakub Podlesak

Re: Single Element Arrays and JSON

Hi Charles,

i apologize for late response.

You have two options:

1) try to use natural notation, JSONConfiguration.natural().build(), instead of the mapped one
    then information on arrays should be propagated automatically from JAXB to the JSON processing layer
    see [1] for an example

2) use POJO->JSON direct mapping (i.e. no JAXB involved), where the format you get is probably even more "natural"
    configuration is done using a ResourceConfig feature:
        initParams.put(JSONConfiguration.FEATURE_POJO_MAPPING, "true");
    see [2] for an example

i hope one of the above will work for you, if not, please let me know.

Thanks,

~Jakub

[1]http://download.java.net/maven/2/com/sun/jersey/samples/json-from-jaxb/1.4/json-from-jaxb-1.4-project.zip
[2]http://download.java.net/maven/2/com/sun/jersey/samples/jacksonjsonprovider/1.4/jacksonjsonprovider-1.4-project.zip

On 10/12/2010 06:58 PM, Charles Overbeck wrote:

I never got a reply to this. I'm not complaining; I realize nobody owes me a reply, and I do appreciate all the great support I've gotten here for my other questions. But I'm hoping this got overlooked due to JavaOne. :)

Is there really no other solution than to manually and explicitly specify which fields should be arrays via the JSONConfiguration.mapped.arrays()?

Thanks in advance,

Charles

P.S. Apologies in advance if this gets posted twice. It seemed like the newsgroup was down for several days; my first message from last Friday bounced back. So I'm posting a new one here.

From: Charles Overbeck [hidden email]
To: [hidden email]
Sent: Tue, September 14, 2010 2:00:45 PM
Subject: [Jersey] Single Element Arrays and JSON

Hello,

Using Jersey/JAXB (Jersey version 1.1.5.1), I ran across an issue where the JSON representation of a l element List doesn't come back as an array, but if there are 2 or more elements, it does. In researching it, I came across these two links that discuss it:

http://forums.netbeans.org/post-68036.html

http://blogs.sun.com/enterprisetechtips/entry/configuring_json_for_restful_web

Is there any solution other than what is described in the above links? I currently have over 50 JAXB beans (they are actually generated from an XSD schema, but same difference). It seems sort of painful to have to go through them all and figure out which fields I have to specify as parameters to JSONConfiguration.mapped().arrays().

In addition what happens if I have the same field name used more than once, once where I want it to be an array, and once where I don't? Here is one of my generated JAXB beans:

@XmlType(name = "BillToLocationsType", propOrder = {
"billToLocation"
})
public class BillToLocationsType {

protected List<LocationType> billToLocation;

I guess I should name that field (or element, in the XSD) billToLocations. But since I don't, what happens if some other JAXBean with "protected LocationType billToLocation"? And then I have JSONConfiguration.mapped().arrays("billToLocation")?

BTW, the reason I have it this way is that my generated xml does come out how I want it:

<billToLocations><billToLocation>...</billToLocation><billToLocation>...</billToLocation></billToLocations>

I'll look into the naming some more.

I sort of digressed. The thing I most want to know is if there is another, easier way to have a single element JSON array generated, without having to manually look at every JAXB bean.

Thanks,

Charles