How to deserialize Joda DateTime using Jackson with Jersey 2 Client in Spring MVC?

Question

I've been bashing my head with this proof of concept for a while. I want to consume a REST endpoint that returns JSON payload with an ISO8601 UTC timestamp:

{  ...
  "timestamp" : "2014-08-20T11:51:31.233Z" 
}

and I want to consume it using a command line Java client written as a Jersey 2 client with Jackson/Spring Boot. The marshalling POJO is defined as follows:

@JsonIgnoreProperties(ignoreUnknown = true)
@JsonInclude(Include.NON_NULL)
public class GreetingResource
{
  @JsonProperty("timestamp")
  private DateTime date;

  ...
}

After following recommendations shown in:

https://jersey.java.net/documentation/latest/user-guide.html#json.jackson

and using the following Gradle dependencies:

dependencies {
    compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter")
    compile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-logging")
    compile("joda-time:joda-time")
    compile("com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-core")
    compile("com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-annotations")
    compile("com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-databind")
    compile("com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype:jackson-datatype-joda")
    compile("com.fasterxml.jackson.jaxrs:jackson-jaxrs-json-provider:2.3.3")
    compile("org.apache.commons:commons-lang3:3.3.2")
    compile("org.glassfish.jersey.core:jersey-client:2.2")
    compile("org.glassfish.jersey.media:jersey-media-json-jackson:2.2")
    testCompile("org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-test")
}

I always get this error:

Exception in thread "main" javax.ws.rs.ProcessingException: Error reading entity from input stream.
  at org.glassfish.jersey.message.internal.InboundMessageContext.readEntity(InboundMessageContext.java:849)
  at org.glassfish.jersey.message.internal.InboundMessageContext.readEntity(InboundMessageContext.java:768)
  at org.glassfish.jersey.client.InboundJaxrsResponse.readEntity(InboundJaxrsResponse.java:96)
  at org.glassfish.jersey.client.ScopedJaxrsResponse.access$001(ScopedJaxrsResponse.java:56)
  at org.glassfish.jersey.client.ScopedJaxrsResponse$1.call(ScopedJaxrsResponse.java:77)
  at org.glassfish.jersey.internal.Errors.process(Errors.java:315)
  at org.glassfish.jersey.internal.Errors.process(Errors.java:297)
  at org.glassfish.jersey.internal.Errors.process(Errors.java:228)
  at org.glassfish.jersey.process.internal.RequestScope.runInScope(RequestScope.java:397)
  at org.glassfish.jersey.client.ScopedJaxrsResponse.readEntity(ScopedJaxrsResponse.java:74)
  at client.GreetingClient.processResponse(GreetingClient.java:62)
  at client.GreetingClient.performGet(GreetingClient.java:53)
  at client.GreetingService.internalLoadGreeting(GreetingService.java:44)
  at client.GreetingService.LoadGreeting(GreetingService.java:27)
  at client.Application.main(Application.java:25)
Caused by: com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.JsonMappingException: Can not instantiate value of type [simple type, class org.joda.time.DateTime] from String value ('2014-08-20T12:19:36.358Z'); no single-String constructor/factory method (through reference chain: client.GreetingResource["timestamp"])
  at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.std.StdValueInstantiator._createFromStringFallbacks(StdValueInstantiator.java:428)
  at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.std.StdValueInstantiator.createFromString(StdValueInstantiator.java:299)
  at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.BeanDeserializerBase.deserializeFromString(BeanDeserializerBase.java:1150)
  at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.BeanDeserializer._deserializeOther(BeanDeserializer.java:139)
  at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.BeanDeserializer.deserialize(BeanDeserializer.java:126)
  at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.SettableBeanProperty.deserialize(SettableBeanProperty.java:525)
  at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.impl.MethodProperty.deserializeAndSet(MethodProperty.java:99)
  at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.BeanDeserializer.vanillaDeserialize(BeanDeserializer.java:242)
  at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.deser.BeanDeserializer.deserialize(BeanDeserializer.java:118)
  at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectReader._bind(ObjectReader.java:1233)
  at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectReader.readValue(ObjectReader.java:677)
  at com.fasterxml.jackson.jaxrs.base.ProviderBase.readFrom(ProviderBase.java:777)
  at org.glassfish.jersey.message.internal.ReaderInterceptorExecutor$TerminalReaderInterceptor.aroundReadFrom(ReaderInterceptorExecutor.java:188)
  at org.glassfish.jersey.message.internal.ReaderInterceptorExecutor.proceed(ReaderInterceptorExecutor.java:134)

I have given up. What am I doing wrong?

The client is configured as follows:

import javax.ws.rs.client.Client;
import javax.ws.rs.client.ClientBuilder;
import javax.ws.rs.client.Invocation.Builder;
import javax.ws.rs.client.WebTarget;
import org.glassfish.jersey.client.ClientConfig;

...

@Component
public class GreetingClient
{

  private final WebTarget serviceWebTarget;

  {
    ClientConfig config = new ClientConfig();
    config.register(MyObjectMapperProvider.class);
    config.register(JacksonFeatures.class);
    Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient(config);
    this.serviceWebTarget = client.target("http://myserver:8080");
  }

  ...  

}

The registered provider is defined as (in the same package as the client):

@Provider
public class MyObjectMapperProvider implements ContextResolver<ObjectMapper>
{
  private final static DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS'Z'");


  @Override
  public ObjectMapper getContext(Class<?> type)
  {
    final ObjectMapper result = new JodaMapper();
    result.setDateFormat(dateFormat);
    return result;
  }

}

I have tried with/without registering the provider and also annotating the field to use DateTimeDeserializer (through @JsonDeserialize) - only to get an error because "there is no default no-arg constructor available".

If I use standard java.util.Date instead with

@JsonFormat(shape = JsonFormat.Shape.STRING, pattern = "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS'Z'")

it works like a breeze.

Any clues? Thanks for your help.

Have you tried to use the Joda Jackson module? https://github.com/FasterXML/jackson-datatype-joda — Alexey Gavrilov, Aug 20 '14 at 13:35
yes, as from my code I'm linking to com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype:jackson-datatype-joda — Reynaldo, Aug 20 '14 at 14:05

score 12 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 20 '14 at 20:17

Below test works OK:

import java.io.IOException;

import org.joda.time.DateTime;
import org.junit.Test;

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonIgnoreProperties;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonInclude;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonInclude.Include;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonProperty;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype.joda.JodaModule;

public class JacksonTest {

    private static final String json = "{ \n" +
            "  \"timestamp\" : \"2014-08-20T11:51:31.233Z\" \n" +
            "}";

    @Test
    public void test() throws IOException {
        ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
        mapper.registerModule(new JodaModule());

        System.out.println(mapper.readValue(json, GreetingResource.class));
    }
}

@JsonIgnoreProperties(ignoreUnknown = true)
@JsonInclude(Include.NON_NULL)
class GreetingResource {
    @JsonProperty("timestamp")
    private DateTime date;

    public DateTime getDate() {
        return date;
    }

    public void setDate(DateTime date) {
        this.date = date;
    }

    @Override
    public String toString() {
        return "GreetingResource{" +
                "date=" + date +
                '}';
    }
}

Maven configuration:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackson-core</artifactId>
    <version>2.4.1.1</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackson-databind</artifactId>
    <version>2.4.1.3</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackson-annotations</artifactId>
    <version>2.4.1</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackson-datatype-joda</artifactId>
    <version>2.4.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>joda-time</groupId>
    <artifactId>joda-time</artifactId>
    <version>2.4</version>
</dependency>

+1, but the `@JsonProperty("timestamp")` was confusing. I thought it was something that was required for the JodaModule to handle the conversion correctly, but it just changes the resulting deserialized json property name from "date" (name of the class field) to "timestamp". — Patrick M, Jan 30 '15 at 16:38
Yes, it works like you wrote. '@JsonProperty("timestamp")' just defines JSON name for this property. — Michał Ziober, Jan 31 '15 at 09:26
Just by adding mapper.registerModule(new JodaModule()); in mapper and adding the jodaTime dependency worked for me :) Thanks, I was stuck from long. — S2K, Jan 22 '18 at 06:30
Months of frustration before having found your "mapper.registerModule(new JodaModule());" trick, thank you! — Darko Romanov, Mar 13 '18 at 08:30
@Shikha `mapper.registerModule(new JodaModule())` worked ! Thank you. — Rohit V, Oct 11 '18 at 20:19

score 7 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 17 '15 at 23:22

For anyone else having issues, none of the other answers were really fully complete so its this

WebTarget target = ClientBuilder.newClient().target(host);

JacksonJaxbJsonProvider provider = new JacksonJaxbJsonProvider();

provider.setMapper(new JodaMapper());

target.register(provider);

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 09 '15 at 12:01

I have come across the same problem. What you have to do is to register custom ObjectMapper in Jersey:

@Component
public class JerseyConfig extends ResourceConfig {

    public JerseyConfig() {
        JacksonJaxbJsonProvider provider = new JacksonJaxbJsonProvider();
        provider.setMapper(new JodaMapper());

        register(provider);
        packages("endpoints.package.names");
    }
}

score 1 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 23 '15 at 19:32

Piotor Glazar works one way but not the other. (It will write the date as a timestamp, rather than ISO8601 UTC.)

The one change from his solution is to disable SerializationFeature.WRITE_DATES_AS_TIMESTAMPS.

Here is the solution that worked for me.

public class JerseyConfig extends ResourceConfig {

    public JerseyConfig() {
        JacksonJaxbJsonProvider provider = new JacksonJaxbJsonProvider();
        JodaMapper jodaMapper = new JodaMapper();
        jodaMapper.disable(SerializationFeature.WRITE_DATES_AS_TIMESTAMPS);
        provider.setMapper(jodaMapper);

        register(provider);
    }
}

Lyju I Edwinson · Answer 5 · 2016-09-21T23:43:15.337

If you want to achieve the same in J2EE project for Jersy client, please refer the code below.

    final Client client = ClientBuilder.newClient();
    final WebTarget target = client.target(URI);

    final JacksonJaxbJsonProvider provider = new JacksonJaxbJsonProvider();
    final JodaMapper jodaMapper = new JodaMapper();
    jodaMapper.disable(SerializationFeature.WRITE_DATES_AS_TIMESTAMPS);

    //while sending date to server.
    //Use a consistent format to send to server
    final DateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat(DATE_TIME_FORMAT);
    jodaMapper.setDateFormat(format);

    //receiving date from server. [Deserialize]
    //expect any ISO format or any other format and make sure we handle it.
    final SimpleModule module = new SimpleModule();
    module.addDeserializer(Date.class, new CustumDateDeserializer());
    jodaMapper.registerModule(module);

    provider.setMapper(jodaMapper);

    target.register(provider);

And the Date DeSerialiser is below,

private class CustumDateDeserializer extends JsonDeserializer<Date> {

    @Override
    public Date deserialize(JsonParser jp, DeserializationContext ctxt) throws IOException {

        final String stringDate = jp.getText();
        Date parsedDate = null;

        if(stringDate == null || stringDate.trim().isEmpty()) {
            return parsedDate;
        }

        try{
            final DateTimeFormatter parser = ISODateTimeFormat.dateTime();
            parsedDate = parser.parseDateTime(stringDate).toDate();
        }catch(IllegalArgumentException e) {
            //use the default parser if the given date is not iso-format.
            parsedDate = new DateDeserializers.DateDeserializer().deserialize(jp, ctxt);
        }

        return parsedDate;
    }
}

Hope this will help you.

How to deserialize Joda DateTime using Jackson with Jersey 2 Client in Spring MVC?

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