How to tell Jackson to ignore a field during serialization if its value is null?

To suppress serializing properties with null values using Jackson >2.0, you can configure the ObjectMapper directly, or make use of the @JsonInclude annotation:

mapper.setSerializationInclusion(Include.NON_NULL);

or:

@JsonInclude(Include.NON_NULL)
class Foo
{
  String bar;
}

Alternatively, you could use @JsonInclude in a getter so that the attribute would be shown if the value is not null.

A more complete example is available in my answer to How to prevent null values inside a Map and null fields inside a bean from getting serialized through Jackson.

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Just to expand on the other answers - if you need to control the omission of null values on a per-field basis, annotate the field in question (or alternatively annotate the field's 'getter').

example - here only fieldOne will be omitted from the JSON if it is null. fieldTwo will always be included in the JSON regardless of if it is null.

public class Foo {

    @JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL) 
    private String fieldOne;

    private String fieldTwo;
}

To omit all null values in the class as a default, annotate the class. Per-field/getter annotations can still be used to override this default if necessary.

example - here fieldOne and fieldTwo will be omitted from the JSON if they are null, respectively, because this is the default set by the class annotation. fieldThree however will override the default and will always be included, because of the annotation on the field.

@JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL)
public class Foo {

    private String fieldOne;

    private String fieldTwo;
    
    @JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.ALWAYS)
    private String fieldThree;
}

UPDATE

The above is for Jackson 2. For earlier versions of Jackson you need to use:

@JsonSerialize(include=JsonSerialize.Inclusion.NON_NULL) 

instead of

@JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL)

If this update is useful, please upvote ZiglioUK's answer below, it pointed out the newer Jackson 2 annotation long before I updated my answer to use it!

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With Jackson > 1.9.11 and < 2.x use @JsonSerialize annotation to do that:

@JsonSerialize(include=JsonSerialize.Inclusion.NON_NULL)

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In Jackson 2.x, use:

@JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL)

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You can use the following mapper configuration:

mapper.getSerializationConfig().setSerializationInclusion(Inclusion.NON_NULL);

Since 2.5 you can user:

mapper.setSerializationInclusion(Include.NON_NULL);

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You can set application.properties:

spring.jackson.default-property-inclusion=non_null

or application.yaml:

spring:
  jackson:
    default-property-inclusion: non_null

http://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/html/common-application-properties.html

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in my case

@JsonInclude(Include.NON_EMPTY)

made it work.

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@JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL)
@JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.NON_EMPTY)

should work.

Include.NON_EMPTY indicates that property is serialized if its value is not null and not empty. Include.NON_NULL indicates that property is serialized if its value is not null.

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This Will work in Spring boot 2.0.3+ and Jackson 2.0+

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonInclude;

@JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL)
public class ApiDTO
{
    // your class variable and 
    // methods
}

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If you want to add this rule to all models in Jackson 2.6+ use:

mapper.setSerializationInclusion(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL);

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If in Spring Boot, you can customize the jackson ObjectMapper directly through property files.

Example application.yml:

spring:
  jackson:
    default-property-inclusion: non_null # only include props if non-null

Possible values are:

always|non_null|non_absent|non_default|non_empty

More: https://docs.spring.io/spring-boot/docs/current/reference/html/howto-spring-mvc.html#howto-customize-the-jackson-objectmapper

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For Jackson 2.5 use :

@JsonInclude(content=Include.NON_NULL)

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If you're trying to serialize a list of object and one of them is null you'll end up including the null item in the JSON even with

mapper.setSerializationInclusion(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL);

will result in:

[{myObject},null]

to get this:

[{myObject}]

one can do something like:

mapper.getSerializerProvider().setNullValueSerializer(new JsonSerializer<Object>() {
        @Override
        public void serialize(Object obj, JsonGenerator jsonGen, SerializerProvider unused)
                throws IOException
        {
            //IGNORES NULL VALUES!
        }
    });

TIP: If you're using DropWizard you can retrieve the ObjectMapper being used by Jersey using environment.getObjectMapper()

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This has been troubling me for quite some time and I finally found the issue. The issue was due to a wrong import. Earlier I had been using

com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.annotation.JsonSerialize

Which had been deprecated. Just replace the import by

import org.codehaus.jackson.map.annotate.JsonSerialize;
import org.codehaus.jackson.map.annotate.JsonSerialize.Inclusion;

and use it as

@JsonSerialize(include=Inclusion.NON_NULL)

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Global configuration if you use Spring

@Configuration
public class JsonConfigurations {

    @Bean
    public Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder objectMapperBuilder() {
        Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder builder = new Jackson2ObjectMapperBuilder();
        builder.serializationInclusion(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL);
        builder.serializationInclusion(JsonInclude.Include.NON_EMPTY);
        builder.failOnUnknownProperties(false);
        return builder;
    }

}

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We have lot of answers to this question. This answer may be helpful in some scenarios If you want to ignore the null values you can use the NOT_NULL in class level. as below

@JsonInclude(Include.NON_NULL)
class Foo
{
  String bar;
}

Some times you may need to ignore the empty values such as you may have initialized the arrayList but there is no elements in that list.In that time using NOT_EMPTY annotation to ignore those empty value fields

@JsonInclude(Include.NON_EMPTY)
class Foo
{
  String bar;
}

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Case one

@JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL)
private String someString;

Case two

@JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.NON_EMPTY)
private String someString;

If someString is null, it will be ignored on both of cases. If someString is "" it just only be ignored on case two.

The same for List = null or List.size() = 0

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Jackson 2.x+ use

mapper.getSerializationConfig().withSerializationInclusion(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL);

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Also, you have to change your approach when using Map myVariable as described in the documentation to eleminate nulls:

From documentation:
com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonInclude

@JacksonAnnotation
@Target(value={ANNOTATION_TYPE, FIELD, METHOD, PARAMETER, TYPE})
@Retention(value=RUNTIME)
Annotation used to indicate when value of the annotated property (when used for a field, method or constructor parameter), or all properties of the annotated class, is to be serialized. Without annotation property values are always included, but by using this annotation one can specify simple exclusion rules to reduce amount of properties to write out.

*Note that the main inclusion criteria (one annotated with value) is checked on Java object level, for the annotated type, and NOT on JSON output -- so even with Include.NON_NULL it is possible that JSON null values are output, if object reference in question is not `null`. An example is java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicReference instance constructed to reference null value: such a value would be serialized as JSON null, and not filtered out.

To base inclusion on value of contained value(s), you will typically also need to specify content() annotation; for example, specifying only value as Include.NON_EMPTY for a {link java.util.Map} would exclude Maps with no values, but would include Maps with `null` values. To exclude Map with only `null` value, you would use both annotations like so:
public class Bean {
   @JsonInclude(value=Include.NON_EMPTY, content=Include.NON_NULL)
   public Map<String,String> entries;
}

Similarly you could Maps that only contain "empty" elements, or "non-default" values (see Include.NON_EMPTY and Include.NON_DEFAULT for more details).
In addition to `Map`s, `content` concept is also supported for referential types (like java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicReference). Note that `content` is NOT currently (as of Jackson 2.9) supported for arrays or java.util.Collections, but supported may be added in future versions.
Since:
2.0

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Try this -

@JsonSerialize(include=JsonSerialize.Inclusion.NON_NULL)
public class XYZ {
    
    protected String field1;
    
    protected String field2;
 }

And for non-null values (On getters/class level) -

@JsonSerialize(include=JsonSerialize.Inclusion.NON_EMPTY)

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