Baeldung Pro – NPI EA (cat = Baeldung)
announcement - icon

Baeldung Pro comes with both absolutely No-Ads as well as finally with Dark Mode, for a clean learning experience:

>> Explore a clean Baeldung

Once the early-adopter seats are all used, the price will go up and stay at $33/year.

Partner – Microsoft – NPI EA (cat = Baeldung)
announcement - icon

Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that enables you to build and deploy modern, cloud-native Java applications and microservices at scale. It offers a simplified developer experience while providing the flexibility and portability of containers.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, visit the documentation page.

You can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Partner – Microsoft – NPI EA (cat= Spring Boot)
announcement - icon

Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that enables you to build and deploy modern, cloud-native Java applications and microservices at scale. It offers a simplified developer experience while providing the flexibility and portability of containers.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, you can get started over on the documentation page.

And, you can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (cat=Spring)
announcement - icon

Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (tag=Microservices)
announcement - icon

Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

eBook – Guide Spring Cloud – NPI EA (cat=Spring Cloud)
announcement - icon

Let's get started with a Microservice Architecture with Spring Cloud:

>> Join Pro and download the eBook

eBook – Mockito – NPI EA (tag = Mockito)
announcement - icon

Mocking is an essential part of unit testing, and the Mockito library makes it easy to write clean and intuitive unit tests for your Java code.

Get started with mocking and improve your application tests using our Mockito guide:

Download the eBook

eBook – Java Concurrency – NPI EA (cat=Java Concurrency)
announcement - icon

Handling concurrency in an application can be a tricky process with many potential pitfalls. A solid grasp of the fundamentals will go a long way to help minimize these issues.

Get started with understanding multi-threaded applications with our Java Concurrency guide:

>> Download the eBook

eBook – Reactive – NPI EA (cat=Reactive)
announcement - icon

Spring 5 added support for reactive programming with the Spring WebFlux module, which has been improved upon ever since. Get started with the Reactor project basics and reactive programming in Spring Boot:

>> Join Pro and download the eBook

eBook – Java Streams – NPI EA (cat=Java Streams)
announcement - icon

Since its introduction in Java 8, the Stream API has become a staple of Java development. The basic operations like iterating, filtering, mapping sequences of elements are deceptively simple to use.

But these can also be overused and fall into some common pitfalls.

To get a better understanding on how Streams work and how to combine them with other language features, check out our guide to Java Streams:

>> Join Pro and download the eBook

eBook – Jackson – NPI EA (cat=Jackson)
announcement - icon

Do JSON right with Jackson

Download the E-book

eBook – HTTP Client – NPI EA (cat=Http Client-Side)
announcement - icon

Get the most out of the Apache HTTP Client

Download the E-book

eBook – Maven – NPI EA (cat = Maven)
announcement - icon

Get Started with Apache Maven:

Download the E-book

eBook – Persistence – NPI EA (cat=Persistence)
announcement - icon

Working on getting your persistence layer right with Spring?

Explore the eBook

eBook – RwS – NPI EA (cat=Spring MVC)
announcement - icon

Building a REST API with Spring?

Download the E-book

Course – LS – NPI EA (cat=Jackson)
announcement - icon

Get started with Spring and Spring Boot, through the Learn Spring course:

>> LEARN SPRING
Course – RWSB – NPI EA (cat=REST)
announcement - icon

Explore Spring Boot 3 and Spring 6 in-depth through building a full REST API with the framework:

>> The New “REST With Spring Boot”

Course – LSS – NPI EA (cat=Spring Security)
announcement - icon

Yes, Spring Security can be complex, from the more advanced functionality within the Core to the deep OAuth support in the framework.

I built the security material as two full courses - Core and OAuth, to get practical with these more complex scenarios. We explore when and how to use each feature and code through it on the backing project.

You can explore the course here:

>> Learn Spring Security

Course – All Access – NPI EA (cat= Spring)
announcement - icon

All Access is finally out, with all of my Spring courses. Learn JUnit is out as well, and Learn Maven is coming fast. And, of course, quite a bit more affordable. Finally.

>> GET THE COURSE
Course – LSD – NPI EA (tag=Spring Data JPA)
announcement - icon

Spring Data JPA is a great way to handle the complexity of JPA with the powerful simplicity of Spring Boot.

Get started with Spring Data JPA through the guided reference course:

>> CHECK OUT THE COURSE

Partner – LambdaTest – NPI EA (cat=Testing)
announcement - icon

End-to-end testing is a very useful method to make sure that your application works as intended. This highlights issues in the overall functionality of the software, that the unit and integration test stages may miss.

Playwright is an easy-to-use, but powerful tool that automates end-to-end testing, and supports all modern browsers and platforms.

When coupled with LambdaTest (an AI-powered cloud-based test execution platform) it can be further scaled to run the Playwright scripts in parallel across 3000+ browser and device combinations:

>> Automated End-to-End Testing With Playwright

Course – Spring Sale 2025 – NPI EA (cat= Baeldung)
announcement - icon

Yes, we're now running our Spring Sale. All Courses are 25% off until 26th May, 2025:

>> EXPLORE ACCESS NOW

Course – Spring Sale 2025 – NPI (cat=Baeldung)
announcement - icon

Yes, we're now running our Spring Sale. All Courses are 25% off until 26th May, 2025:

>> EXPLORE ACCESS NOW

eBook – Jackson – NPI (cat=Jackson)
announcement - icon

Jackson and JSON in Java, finally learn with a coding-first approach:

>> Download the eBook

1. Overview

In this tutorial, we’ll examine the best ways to deal with bidirectional relationships in Jackson.

First, we’ll discuss the Jackson JSON infinite recursion problem. Then we’ll see how to serialize entities with bidirectional relationships. Finally, we’ll deserialize them.

2. Infinite Recursion

Let’s take a look at the Jackson infinite recursion problem. In the following example, we have two entities, “User” and “Item,” with a simple one-to-many relationship:

The “User” entity:

public class User {
    public int id;
    public String name;
    public List<Item> userItems;
}

The “Item” entity:

public class Item {
    public int id;
    public String itemName;
    public User owner;
}

When we try to serialize an instance of “Item,” Jackson will throw a JsonMappingException exception:

@Test(expected = JsonMappingException.class)
public void givenBidirectionRelation_whenSerializing_thenException()
  throws JsonProcessingException {
 
    User user = new User(1, "John");
    Item item = new Item(2, "book", user);
    user.addItem(item);

    new ObjectMapper().writeValueAsString(item);
}

The full exception is:

com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.JsonMappingException:
Infinite recursion (StackOverflowError) 
(through reference chain: 
org.baeldung.jackson.bidirection.Item["owner"]
->org.baeldung.jackson.bidirection.User["userItems"]
->java.util.ArrayList[0]
->org.baeldung.jackson.bidirection.Item["owner"]
->…..

We’ll see over the course of the next few sections how to solve this problem.

3. Use @JsonManagedReference, @JsonBackReference

First, let’s annotate the relationship with @JsonManagedReference, and @JsonBackReference to allow Jackson to better handle the relation:

Here’s the “User” entity:

public class User {
    public int id;
    public String name;

    @JsonManagedReference
    public List<Item> userItems;
}

And the “Item“:

public class Item {
    public int id;
    public String itemName;

    @JsonBackReference
    public User owner;
}

Now let’s test out the new entities:

@Test
public void givenBidirectionRelation_whenUsingJacksonReferenceAnnotationWithSerialization_thenCorrect() throws JsonProcessingException {
    final User user = new User(1, "John");
    final Item item = new Item(2, "book", user);
    user.addItem(item);

    final String itemJson = new ObjectMapper().writeValueAsString(item);
    final String userJson = new ObjectMapper().writeValueAsString(user);

    assertThat(itemJson, containsString("book"));
    assertThat(itemJson, not(containsString("John")));

    assertThat(userJson, containsString("John"));
    assertThat(userJson, containsString("userItems"));
    assertThat(userJson, containsString("book"));
}

Here’s the output of serializing the Item object:

{
 "id":2,
 "itemName":"book"
}

And here’s the output of serializing the User object:

{
 "id":1,
 "name":"John",
 "userItems":[{
   "id":2,
   "itemName":"book"}]
}

Note that:

  • @JsonManagedReference is the forward part of reference, the one that gets serialized normally.
  • @JsonBackReference is the back part of reference; it’ll be omitted from serialization.
  • The serialized Item object doesn’t contain a reference to the User object.

Also note that we can’t switch around the annotations. The following will work for the serialization:

@JsonBackReference
public List<Item> userItems;

@JsonManagedReference
public User owner;

But when we attempt to deserialize the object, it’ll throw an exception, as @JsonBackReference can’t be used on a collection.

If we want to have the serialized Item object contain a reference to the User, we need to use @JsonIdentityInfo. We’ll look at this in the next section.

4. Use @JsonIdentityInfo

Now let’s learn how we can help with the serialization of entities with bidirectional relationships using @JsonIdentityInfo.

We’ll add the class level annotation to our “User” entity:

@JsonIdentityInfo(
  generator = ObjectIdGenerators.PropertyGenerator.class, 
  property = "id")
public class User { ... }

And to the “Item” entity:

@JsonIdentityInfo(
  generator = ObjectIdGenerators.PropertyGenerator.class, 
  property = "id")
public class Item { ... }

Time for the test:

@Test
public void givenBidirectionRelation_whenUsingJsonIdentityInfo_thenCorrect()
  throws JsonProcessingException {
 
    User user = new User(1, "John");
    Item item = new Item(2, "book", user);
    user.addItem(item);

    String result = new ObjectMapper().writeValueAsString(item);

    assertThat(result, containsString("book"));
    assertThat(result, containsString("John"));
    assertThat(result, containsString("userItems"));
}

Here’s the output of serialization:

{
 "id":2,
 "itemName":"book",
 "owner":
    {
        "id":1,
        "name":"John",
        "userItems":[2]
    }
}

5. Use @JsonIgnore

Alternatively, we can use the @JsonIgnore annotation to simply ignore one of the sides of the relationship, thus breaking the chain.

In the following example, we’ll prevent the infinite recursion by ignoring the “User” property “userItems” from serialization:

Here’s the “User” entity:

public class User {
    public int id;
    public String name;

    @JsonIgnore
    public List<Item> userItems;
}

And here’s our test:

@Test
public void givenBidirectionRelation_whenUsingJsonIgnore_thenCorrect()
  throws JsonProcessingException {
 
    User user = new User(1, "John");
    Item item = new Item(2, "book", user);
    user.addItem(item);

    String result = new ObjectMapper().writeValueAsString(item);

    assertThat(result, containsString("book"));
    assertThat(result, containsString("John"));
    assertThat(result, not(containsString("userItems")));
}

Finally, here’s the output of serialization:

{
 "id":2,
 "itemName":"book",
 "owner":
    {
        "id":1,
        "name":"John"
    }
}

6. Use @JsonView

We can also use the newer @JsonView annotation to exclude one side of the relationship.

In the following example, we’ll use two JSON Views, Public and Internal, where Internal extends Public:

public class Views {
    public static class Public {}

    public static class Internal extends Public {}
}

We’ll include all User and Item fields in the Public View except the User field userItems, which will be included in the Internal View:

Here’s our “User” entity:

public class User {
    @JsonView(Views.Public.class)
    public int id;

    @JsonView(Views.Public.class)
    public String name;

    @JsonView(Views.Internal.class)
    public List<Item> userItems;
}

And here’s our “Item” entity:

public class Item {
    @JsonView(Views.Public.class)
    public int id;

    @JsonView(Views.Public.class)
    public String itemName;

    @JsonView(Views.Public.class)
    public User owner;
}

When we serialize using the Public view, it works correctly because we excluded userItems from being serialized:

@Test
public void givenBidirectionRelation_whenUsingPublicJsonView_thenCorrect() 
  throws JsonProcessingException {
 
    User user = new User(1, "John");
    Item item = new Item(2, "book", user);
    user.addItem(item);

    String result = new ObjectMapper().writerWithView(Views.Public.class)
      .writeValueAsString(item);

    assertThat(result, containsString("book"));
    assertThat(result, containsString("John"));
    assertThat(result, not(containsString("userItems")));
}

But if we serialize using an Internal view, JsonMappingException is thrown because all the fields are included:

@Test(expected = JsonMappingException.class)
public void givenBidirectionRelation_whenUsingInternalJsonView_thenException()
  throws JsonProcessingException {
 
    User user = new User(1, "John");
    Item item = new Item(2, "book", user);
    user.addItem(item);

    new ObjectMapper()
      .writerWithView(Views.Internal.class)
      .writeValueAsString(item);
}

7. Use a Custom Serializer

Next, we’ll see how to serialize entities with bidirectional relationships using a custom serializer.

In the following example, we’ll use a custom serializer to serialize the “User” property “userItems:

Here’s the “User” entity:

public class User {
    public int id;
    public String name;

    @JsonSerialize(using = CustomListSerializer.class)
    public List<Item> userItems;
}

And here’s the “CustomListSerializer:

public class CustomListSerializer extends StdSerializer<List<Item>>{

   public CustomListSerializer() {
        this(null);
    }

    public CustomListSerializer(Class<List> t) {
        super(t);
    }

    @Override
    public void serialize(
      List<Item> items, 
      JsonGenerator generator, 
      SerializerProvider provider) 
      throws IOException, JsonProcessingException {
        
        List<Integer> ids = new ArrayList<>();
        for (Item item : items) {
            ids.add(item.id);
        }
        generator.writeObject(ids);
    }
}

Now let’s test out the serializer. As we can see, the right kind of output is being produced:

@Test
public void givenBidirectionRelation_whenUsingCustomSerializer_thenCorrect()
  throws JsonProcessingException {
    User user = new User(1, "John");
    Item item = new Item(2, "book", user);
    user.addItem(item);

    String result = new ObjectMapper().writeValueAsString(item);

    assertThat(result, containsString("book"));
    assertThat(result, containsString("John"));
    assertThat(result, containsString("userItems"));
}

Here’s the final output of the serialization with the custom serializer:

{
 "id":2,
 "itemName":"book",
 "owner":
    {
        "id":1,
        "name":"John",
        "userItems":[2]
    }
}

8. Deserialize With @JsonIdentityInfo

Now let’s see how to deserialize entities with bidirectional relationships using @JsonIdentityInfo.

Here’s the “User” entity:

@JsonIdentityInfo(
  generator = ObjectIdGenerators.PropertyGenerator.class, 
  property = "id")
public class User { ... }

And the “Item” entity:

@JsonIdentityInfo(
  generator = ObjectIdGenerators.PropertyGenerator.class, 
  property = "id")
public class Item { ... }

We’ll write a quick test, starting with some manual JSON data we want to parse, and finishing with the correctly constructed entity:

@Test
public void givenBidirectionRelation_whenDeserializingWithIdentity_thenCorrect() 
  throws JsonProcessingException, IOException {
    String json = 
      "{\"id\":2,\"itemName\":\"book\",\"owner\":{\"id\":1,\"name\":\"John\",\"userItems\":[2]}}";

    ItemWithIdentity item
      = new ObjectMapper().readerFor(ItemWithIdentity.class).readValue(json);
    
    assertEquals(2, item.id);
    assertEquals("book", item.itemName);
    assertEquals("John", item.owner.name);
}

9. Use Custom Deserializer

Finally, let’s deserialize the entities with a bidirectional relationship using a custom deserializer.

In the following example, we’ll use a custom deserializer to parse the “User” property “userItems:

Here’s the “User” entity:

public class User {
    public int id;
    public String name;

    @JsonDeserialize(using = CustomListDeserializer.class)
    public List<Item> userItems;
}

And here’s our “CustomListDeserializer:

public class CustomListDeserializer extends StdDeserializer<List<Item>>{

    public CustomListDeserializer() {
        this(null);
    }

    public CustomListDeserializer(Class<?> vc) {
        super(vc);
    }

    @Override
    public List<Item> deserialize(
      JsonParser jsonparser, 
      DeserializationContext context) 
      throws IOException, JsonProcessingException {
        
        return new ArrayList<>();
    }
}

Finally, here’s the simple test:

@Test
public void givenBidirectionRelation_whenUsingCustomDeserializer_thenCorrect()
  throws JsonProcessingException, IOException {
    String json = 
      "{\"id\":2,\"itemName\":\"book\",\"owner\":{\"id\":1,\"name\":\"John\",\"userItems\":[2]}}";

    Item item = new ObjectMapper().readerFor(Item.class).readValue(json);
 
    assertEquals(2, item.id);
    assertEquals("book", item.itemName);
    assertEquals("John", item.owner.name);
}

10. Conclusion

In this article, we illustrated how to serialize/deserialize entities with bidirectional relationships using Jackson.

The code backing this article is available on GitHub. Once you're logged in as a Baeldung Pro Member, start learning and coding on the project.
Baeldung Pro – NPI EA (cat = Baeldung)
announcement - icon

Baeldung Pro comes with both absolutely No-Ads as well as finally with Dark Mode, for a clean learning experience:

>> Explore a clean Baeldung

Once the early-adopter seats are all used, the price will go up and stay at $33/year.

Partner – Microsoft – NPI EA (cat = Spring Boot)
announcement - icon

Azure Container Apps is a fully managed serverless container service that enables you to build and deploy modern, cloud-native Java applications and microservices at scale. It offers a simplified developer experience while providing the flexibility and portability of containers.

Of course, Azure Container Apps has really solid support for our ecosystem, from a number of build options, managed Java components, native metrics, dynamic logger, and quite a bit more.

To learn more about Java features on Azure Container Apps, visit the documentation page.

You can also ask questions and leave feedback on the Azure Container Apps GitHub page.

Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (cat = Spring)
announcement - icon

Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

Partner – Orkes – NPI EA (tag = Microservices)
announcement - icon

Modern software architecture is often broken. Slow delivery leads to missed opportunities, innovation is stalled due to architectural complexities, and engineering resources are exceedingly expensive.

Orkes is the leading workflow orchestration platform built to enable teams to transform the way they develop, connect, and deploy applications, microservices, AI agents, and more.

With Orkes Conductor managed through Orkes Cloud, developers can focus on building mission critical applications without worrying about infrastructure maintenance to meet goals and, simply put, taking new products live faster and reducing total cost of ownership.

Try a 14-Day Free Trial of Orkes Conductor today.

eBook – HTTP Client – NPI EA (cat=HTTP Client-Side)
announcement - icon

The Apache HTTP Client is a very robust library, suitable for both simple and advanced use cases when testing HTTP endpoints. Check out our guide covering basic request and response handling, as well as security, cookies, timeouts, and more:

>> Download the eBook

eBook – Java Concurrency – NPI EA (cat=Java Concurrency)
announcement - icon

Handling concurrency in an application can be a tricky process with many potential pitfalls. A solid grasp of the fundamentals will go a long way to help minimize these issues.

Get started with understanding multi-threaded applications with our Java Concurrency guide:

>> Download the eBook

eBook – Java Streams – NPI EA (cat=Java Streams)
announcement - icon

Since its introduction in Java 8, the Stream API has become a staple of Java development. The basic operations like iterating, filtering, mapping sequences of elements are deceptively simple to use.

But these can also be overused and fall into some common pitfalls.

To get a better understanding on how Streams work and how to combine them with other language features, check out our guide to Java Streams:

>> Join Pro and download the eBook

eBook – Persistence – NPI EA (cat=Persistence)
announcement - icon

Working on getting your persistence layer right with Spring?

Explore the eBook

Course – LS – NPI EA (cat=REST)

announcement - icon

Get started with Spring Boot and with core Spring, through the Learn Spring course:

>> CHECK OUT THE COURSE

Course – Spring Sale 2025 – NPI EA (cat= Baeldung)
announcement - icon

Yes, we're now running our Spring Sale. All Courses are 25% off until 26th May, 2025:

>> EXPLORE ACCESS NOW

Course – Spring Sale 2025 – NPI (All)
announcement - icon

Yes, we're now running our Spring Sale. All Courses are 25% off until 26th May, 2025:

>> EXPLORE ACCESS NOW

eBook Jackson – NPI EA – 3 (cat = Jackson)