Use class name as root key for JSON Jackson serialization

Question

Suppose I have a pojo:

import org.codehaus.jackson.map.*;

public class MyPojo {
    int id;
    public int getId()
    { return this.id; }

    public void          


        

Answer 1

I have found through experience that it is a good idea for all JSON to include both the backend type (as a string) and the component type used to render it in the front end (if using something like angular or Vue).

The justification for doing this is so that you can process various types with a single set of code.

In vue, for example, having the name of the UI component in the data allows you, among other things, to have a screen rendering a list of children of different types using only a single tag in the parent template.

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For backend systems and web services - I prefer to use a single web service processor class that provides logging, auditing and exception handling for all web services by looking up the appropriate processor class based on the incoming payload. That makes the implementation of all my web services look exactly the same (about 3 lines of code), and I get detailed event logging through the lifecycle of the call without writing any per service code to do so.

Having the type wrapping the JSON makes it self documenting. If all you see are the properties, you have no idea what you are looking at until you find the corresponding end point.

If you want to write data driven software, being able to identify what you are processing is a basic requirement.