Nulls in response about odata-client

[davidmoten]

definitely a defect, introduced by recent fix. I'll have a look, thanks!

[davidmoten]

Ah wait, this is not the response from the graph service but what happens when you serialize a User object? How do you serialize it? In a recent fix I did remove an annotation from entity objects so that you will now have to instruct the serializer to exclude nulls. Serializer.INSTANCE does this by default:

User user = User.builderUser().id("12345").build();
System.out.println(Serializer.INSTANCE.serialize(user));

output:

{"@odata.type":"microsoft.graph.user","id":"12345"}

[RajatNair]

How do you serialize it?

Serializing it using Spring Webflux -

ServerResponse.ok().contentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_STREAM_JSON).body(this.service.listUsers(), User.class)

where listUsers return Flux<Stream<odata.msgraph.client.entity.User>>

The above sample I had posted using v0.1.12 and v0.1.17 was using the same code.

[davidmoten]

Entity objects used to have a class level annotation @JsonInclude(Include.NON_NULL) which was friendly for your use case. I removed that annotation because it was breaking a scenario where we do want to serialize some or all nulls (updating fields to null in a patch).

So if you are serializing it using Spring Webflux then just configure Webflux to exclude nulls. I found lots of information when I googled "webflux customize json serialization"

[davidmoten]

I'll have a look at returning the class level annotation but I doubt that I can override it (which I need to do). So no promises!

[davidmoten]

Ah yes, I can override the class level annotation. So don't worry about customizing your serializer, I'll change all generated objects to have @JsonInclude(Include.NON_NULL) again.

[davidmoten]

Trying to do this I think I've encountered Jackson bugs in relation to setting the AnnotationInspector. I've got a workaround but feels like I've opened a Pandora's box of more detective work!

[davidmoten]

The change you want is in release 0.1.20 on Maven Central now.

[davidmoten]

By the way we can probably get the default serialization to suppress including empty arrays as well. I'll have to make sure it doesn't have any nasty side-effects though.

[davidmoten]

I think this is done so closing. Reopen if you need to.

[RajatNair]

I think this is done so closing. Reopen if you need to.

Validated the fix, it's working as expected. Thanks.

By the way we can probably get the default serialization to suppress including empty arrays as well. I'll have to make sure it doesn't have any nasty side-effects though.

Can you give me some pointers? Which Jackson class should I be extending?

[davidmoten]

Validated the fix, it's working as expected. Thanks.

Good to hear.

By the way we can probably get the default serialization to suppress including empty arrays as well. I'll have to make sure it doesn't have any nasty side-effects though.

Can you give me some pointers? Which Jackson class should I be extending?

I would just replace the @JsonInclude(Include.NON_NULL) annotation at the top of all entities, complex types, collectionPage with @JsonInclude(Include.NON_EMPTY).