Override EntityResponse toString method

Question

I am playing around with REST service. I have created with swagger editor an API definition and then I have generated the code for a Springboot server. After some changes in Eclipse, all works fine, but I have one "problem", I am not able to override the toString method to display the result as I want. (there is an object called Genre with genreId and definition, I don't want to display the genreId)

This is the method implementation in Controller:

public ResponseEntity<List<Movie>> findMovies(
@ApiParam(value = "Tags used to filter the result") @RequestParam(value = 
"tags", required = false) List<String> tags,
@ApiParam(value = "maximum number of results to return") @RequestParam(value = 
"limit", required = false) Integer limit) {
List<Movie> movies = movieRepository.findAll();
return new ResponseEntity<List<Movie>>(movies, HttpStatus.OK);
}

This is the toString method in Model class:

@Override
public String toString(){
return "Movie {"+"movieId='" + movieId + '\'' + ", title='" + title + '\'' +", 
description='"+ description + '\'' +", rating='"+rating+ '\'' 
+"price='"+price+ '\'' +"genres='"+genres+  '}';
}

Genres is a list of object Genre that have genreId and definition. I have also this in Genre class:

@Id
@JsonProperty("genre_id")
@JsonIgnore
private String genreId;
private String definition;

this is the toString method:

@Override
public String toString() {
return "Genre {"+"definition='" + definition + '}';
}

I don't want to have genreId in my results, but I have it. Debugging the code I saw that in controller: return new ResponseEntity>(movies, HttpStatus.OK); the movie object does't have the genreId, so for some reasons ResponseEntity print it. I have inserte a brekpoint and the toString method inside Genre is not called

this is an example of result:

{
"genres": [
{
"genreId": "1",
"definition": "Fantasy"
}
],
"movie_id": "2",
"title": "The Hobbit",
"description": "A fantasy journey",
"rating": 6,
"price": 30
}

Some hint?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · 2018-01-26 10:25:59Z

1

Your output is generated by JSON serializer, it does not use toString() method.

It uses field annotations to determine which fields should be serialized (or ignored) to json-format. Mark genreId in your Genre class with @JsonIgnore annotation to exclude this field from JSON output.

Update In some cases (based on JSON serializer configuration/bugs/etc, it is not enough to mark the field with @JsonIgonre, you should also mark the getter of this field too. As it is shown below.

Example:

class Genre {

   @JsonIgnore
   private long genreId;

   @JsonIgnore
   public long getGenreId() { 
      return genreId;
   }
   // the rest of your Genre class ... 
}

edited Jan 26, 2018 at 10:25

answered Jan 26, 2018 at 10:14

user784540

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1 Comment

MassimoB Over a year ago

That is wath I have in my code: -@Id -@JsonProperty("genre_id") -@JsonIgnore private String genreId; private String definition;

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