JsonIgnore and JsonBackReference are being Ignored

Question

i'm using spring 4.0.1 , hibernate 4.3.5 ,jackson 1.9.2 and STS IDE I'm creating a RESTful webservice that returns a data in JSON format when i use Hibernate code generator it generates getters and setter of associated entities annotated by @OneToMany(fetch = FetchType.LAZY, mappedBy = "user") for the source and @ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.LAZY) for the reference which causes an infinite recursion during serialization. I tried using Jackson's @JsonIgnore and @JsonBackReference annotations to fix the problem but it seems as if they are being totally ignored and the infinite recursion is still occurring.

Caused by: com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.JsonMappingException: Infinite recursion (StackOverflowError)

This is my entity classes User.class

    //i get that suggestion from some sites
    @JsonIgnoreProperties({ "hibernateLazyInitializer", "handler" })
    @Entity
    @Table(name = "user", catalog = "someSchema")    
    public class User implements java.io.Serializable {

        private String name;
        private String password;
        private String username;
        private Set<Telephone> telephones = new HashSet<Telephone>(0);
        @JsonManagedReference
        @OneToMany(fetch = FetchType.LAZY, mappedBy = "user")
        public Set<Telephone> getTelephones() {
            return this.telephones;
        }

        public void setTelephones(Set<Telephone> telephones) {
            this.telephones = telephones;
        }
    }

Telephone.class

@Entity
@Table(name = "telephone", catalog = "someSchema")
public class Telephone implements java.io.Serializable {


    private User user;
    private String telephone;

    @ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.LAZY)
//tried @JsonIgnore only and both
    @JsonIgnore
//tried @JsonBackReference only and both
    @JsonBackReference
    @JoinColumn(name = "user_id", nullable = false)
    public User getUser() {
        return this.user;
    }


    @JsonIgnore
    @JsonBackReference
    public void setUser(User user) {
        this.user = user;
    }

}

concerning registering jackson to my application, i used xml config

   <mvc:annotation-driven>
        <mvc:message-converters>
            <bean
                class="org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter">
                <property name="objectMapper">
                    <bean
                        class="web.jsonConverters.HibernateAwareObjectMapper" />
                </property>
            </bean>
        </mvc:message-converters>
    </mvc:annotation-driven>

and mapper class

public class HibernateAwareObjectMapper extends ObjectMapper {

    public HibernateAwareObjectMapper() {
        Hibernate4Module hm = new Hibernate4Module();
        registerModule(hm);
    }
}

Do you have any idea why the Jackson annotations are being ignored?

any help will be appreciated...

Answer 1

use

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonBackReference;

instead of

import org.codehaus.jackson.annotate.JsonBackReference;

Answer 2

i found a way by annotating the setter by @Transient

idont know why but it works fine

User.class

    //i get that suggestion from some sites
    @JsonIgnoreProperties({ "hibernateLazyInitializer", "handler" })
    @Entity
    @Table(name = "user", catalog = "someSchema")    
    public class User implements java.io.Serializable {

        private String name;
        private String password;
        private String username;
        private Set<Telephone> telephones = new HashSet<Telephone>(0);

        @OneToMany(fetch = FetchType.LAZY, mappedBy = "user")
        public Set<Telephone> getTelephones() {
            return this.telephones;
        }

        public void setTelephones(Set<Telephone> telephones) {
            this.telephones = telephones;
        }
    }

Telephone.class

   @Entity
   @Table(name = "telephone", catalog = "someSchema")
   public class Telephone implements java.io.Serializable {


    private User user;
    private String telephone;

    @ManyToOne(fetch = FetchType.LAZY)

    @JoinColumn(name = "user_id", nullable = false)
    public User getUser() {
        return this.user;
    }

    @Transient  
    public void setUser(User user) {
    this.user = user;
      }

    }

---

Another Naive Solution

I solved it manually in my RESTful Controller

by loop over the set of telephones and set user to null

    @RestController
    @RequestMapping("/user") 
    public class UserController extends ParentController {

        static final Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(UserController.class.getName());
        @Autowired
        IUserDao iuserdao;

            @RequestMapping(value = "/signin", method = RequestMethod.POST)
            public ResponseEntity<User> signin(@RequestBody LoginWrapper login) {
                System.out.println("==============GET USER==============");
                try {
                    User user = iuserdao.signin(login);
                    if (user == null) {
                        HttpHeaders httpHeaders = new HttpHeaders();
                        httpHeaders.set(ERR_HEADER_NAME, "user not exist");
                        return new ResponseEntity<User>(httpHeaders, HttpStatus.NOT_FOUND);
                    } else {
                        List<Telephone> tels=user.getTelephones();
                        for (Telephone telephone : tels) {
                            telephone.setUser(null);
                        }
                        return new ResponseEntity<User>(user, HttpStatus.OK);
                    }

                } catch (Exception e) {
                    System.out.println(e.getMessage());
                    return null;
                }

            }

still need a better answer concerning Jackson problem..