Jersey + Jackson JSON date format serialization - how to change the format or use custom JacksonJsonProvider

Question

I am using Jersey + Jackson to provide REST JSON services layer for my application. The problem I have is that the default Date serialization format looks like that:

Answer 1

Re-write the MessageBodyWriterJSON with this

import javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType; 
import javax.ws.rs.ext.Provider; 

import org.codehaus.jackson.jaxrs.JacksonJsonProvider; 
import org.codehaus.jackson.map.ObjectMapper; 
import org.codehaus.jackson.map.SerializationConfig; 

@Provider 
public class MessageBodyWriterJSON extends JacksonJsonProvider { 
            public MessageBodyWriterJSON (){ 
            } 

        @Override 
            public ObjectMapper locateMapper(Class<?> type, MediaType mediaType) 
        { 
        ObjectMapper mapper = super.locateMapper(type, mediaType); 
        //DateTime in ISO format "2012-04-07T17:00:00.000+0000" instead of 'long' format 
            mapper.configure(SerializationConfig.Feature.WRITE_DATES_AS_TIMESTAMPS, false); 
            return mapper; 
        } 
}

Answer 2

To configure your own ObjectMapper, you need to inject your own class that implements ContextResolver<ObjectMapper>

Exactly how to get jersey to pick this up will kind of depend on your IOC (spring, guice). I use spring, and my class looks something like this:

import javax.ws.rs.ext.ContextResolver;
import javax.ws.rs.ext.Provider;

import org.codehaus.jackson.map.ObjectMapper;
import org.codehaus.jackson.map.SerializationConfig.Feature;
import org.codehaus.jackson.map.deser.CustomDeserializerFactory;
import org.codehaus.jackson.map.deser.StdDeserializerProvider;
import org.codehaus.jackson.map.ser.CustomSerializerFactory;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

// tell spring to look for this.
@Component
// tell spring it's a provider (type is determined by the implements)
@Provider
public class ObjectMapperProvider implements ContextResolver<ObjectMapper> {
    @Override
    public ObjectMapper getContext(Class<?> type) {
        // create the objectMapper.
        ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();
        // configure the object mapper here, eg.
           objectMapper.configure(SerializationConfig.Feature.WRITE_DATES_AS_TIMESTAMPS, false);
        return objectMapper;
    }
}