@JsonIgnore not honored when applied to a relationship [DATAREST-87]

[spring-projects-issues]

Marco Fago opened DATAREST-87 and commented

Consider two entities ClientEntity and AbonnementEntity as follows:

@Entity
public class ClientEntity {
....
   @JSonIgnore
   @OneToMany(targetEntity = AbonnementEntity.class, mappedBy = "client", cascade = CascadeType.ALL, fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
   private Set<Abonnement> abonnements;
....
}

and

@Entity
@Inheritance(strategy = InheritanceType.SINGLE_TABLE)
@DiscriminatorColumn(name = "TYPE", discriminatorType = DiscriminatorType.STRING, length = 20)
public abstract class AbonnementEntity<> implements Serializable {
....
    @NotNull
    @ManyToOne(targetEntity = ClientEntity.class, optional = false)
    private ClientEntity client;
....
}

When issuing the request http://localhost/client the @JsonIgnore is not honored and all the related abonnement entities are returned into the response under the content section

---

Affects: 1.1.0.M1

11 votes, 13 watchers

[spring-projects-issues]

Jon Brisbin commented

Have you tried @RestResource(exported = false) rather than @JsonIgnore?

[spring-projects-issues]

Marco Fago commented

Using @RestResource(exported = false) does not help and produces an infinite recursive output (since, I think, ClientEntity and AbonnementEntity are double linked each other) which ends with a StackOverflowException.

[spring-projects-issues]

Ashish Jamthe commented

I have exactly this issue. @RestResource(exported = false) will work only if the entity is directly managed by repository. I want to customize my json to include child nodes (to avoid multiple REST requests for a given view). This is proving more difficult that I thought. As neither the export=false works nor jackson annotations hold. Please let me know if this can be fixed.

[spring-projects-issues]

Nick Weedon commented

I think the @JsonIgnore side of this issue is closely realted to DATAREST-117 which i have now written a fix for (https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-data-rest/pull/133)

[spring-projects-issues]

Oliver Drotbohm commented

This should be fixed by the fixes for DATAREST-117 and DATAREST-248

[spring-projects-issues]

Heiko Wolf commented

This is not fixed. Here is my test case:

@Entity
public class TestEntity {

    @Id @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.TABLE)
    private Long id;

    private String name;

    @JsonIgnore /* This works for fields */
    private String name2;

    @ManyToOne(optional = true)
    @JsonIgnore
    private TestEntity parent;

    public TestEntity getParent() {
        return parent;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public String getName2() {
        return name2;
    }

    public void setName2(String name2) {
        this.name2 = name2;
    }
}

@RepositoryRestResource(exported = true, path = "test")
public interface TestEntityRepository extends PagingAndSortingRepository<TestEntity, Long> {
}

{
  "name" : "Test 3",
  "_links" : {
    "self" : {
      "href" : "http://localhost:8080/webui/rest/test/3"
    },
    "parent" : {
      "href" : "http://localhost:8080/webui/rest/test/3/parent"
    }
  }
}

{
  "name" : "Test 3",
  "_links" : {
    "self" : {
      "href" : "http://localhost:8080/webui/rest/test/3"
    }
  }
}

public class RestApiInitializer extends AbstractAnnotationConfigDispatcherServletInitializer {

    protected String getServletName() {
        return "dispatcher-rest";
    }

    protected String[] getServletMappings() {
        return new String[] { "/rest/*" };
    }

    protected Class[] getServletConfigClasses() {
        return new Class<?>[] { RestConfig.class };
    }

    protected Class[] getRootConfigClasses() {
        return new Class<?>[] {};
    }

    @Configuration
    @EnableWebMvc
    @ComponentScan({ "rest.test" })
    public static class RestConfig extends RepositoryRestMvcConfiguration {
    }
}

Tested with Spring Data Rest 2.1.0.RELEASE, Spring Data JPA 1.8.0.RELEASE, Spring 4.0.5.RELEASE.

[spring-projects-issues]

Willie Wheeler commented

Still true for 2.3.0 Fowler.

@JsonIgnore works on the simple properties (strings, booleans, whatever) but not on associations.

Is this the intended behavior? I guess there's a subtle difference between what's logically included in the REST representation (which we can control via @RestResource(exported)) and what's included during actual serialization (which @JsonIgnore handles). The association links remain because the links aren't the properties being suppressed. If this is the concept/logic then it would be good to explain that in the docs.

[spring-projects-issues]

Oliver Drotbohm commented

I just gave this a quick spin and would like to keep this as is (i.e. @JsonIgnore to be used for simple properties and @RestResource for associations).

The preparation process is currently a two step one. The first one is turning an arbitrary entity into a resource which adds links for associations. This step doesn't know anything about Jackson (as it basically just operates on the entity metadata). The second step is taken in the Jackson serializer that basically prevents the properties from being rendered in the representation. At this point however the links have already been created and we can't necessarily reliably find the link associated with the property (as ResourceProcessors might have modified them already).

WDYT?

[spring-projects-issues]

Willie Wheeler commented

+1 Oliver

As I noted in the comment, it would be good to explain this in the docs

[spring-projects-issues]

KJ commented

Looks like this is still the case in 2.4.4.RELEASE (version defined with spring boot version 1.3.3.RELEASE)

[spring-projects-issues]

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