How to deserialize a class with overloaded constructors using JsonCreator

Answer 1

If you don't mind doing a little more work, you can deserialize the entity manually:

@JsonDeserialize(using = Person.Deserializer.class)
public class Person {

    public Person(@JsonProperty("name") String name,
            @JsonProperty("age") int age) {
        // ... person with both name and age
    }

    public Person(@JsonProperty("name") String name) {
        // ... person with just a name
    }

    public static class Deserializer extends StdDeserializer {
        public Deserializer() {
            this(null);
        }

        Deserializer(Class vc) {
            super(vc);
        }

        @Override
        public Person deserialize(JsonParser jp, DeserializationContext ctxt) throws IOException {
            JsonNode node = jp.getCodec().readTree(jp);
            if (node.has("name") && node.has("age")) {
                String name = node.get("name").asText();
                int age = node.get("age").asInt();
                return new Person(name, age);
            } else if (node.has("name")) {
                String name = node.get("name").asText();
                return new Person("name");
            } else {
                throw new RuntimeException("unable to parse");
            }
        }
    }
}