Question

I’m working on a project in wich I need to return a list of objects in json format. I’m using Spring-mvc framework with jackson library in order to do the serialization.

I want a json structure containing directly the objects, not a ‘name:array of objects’.

This is my simplified code:

@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET, value = "/clients")
public List getClients(
        @RequestParam(value = "estat", required = false) String estat
        throws Exception {

    List<Clients> l = s.mdClients(estat);
    return l;
}

This “return l” that you see goes directly to Jackson, and jackson converts ‘l’ into an structure like:

{
  "ClientsList": [
    {
      "x": "2",
      "y": "5"
    }
]}

The problem is the root “ClientsList”. I want to get this ouput without root:

{
  [
    {
      "x": "2",
      "y": "5"
    }
]}

So, anyone could help? thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I’ve found the solution using @ResponseBody in my controller as @vacuum commented (thanks!):

@RequestMapping(method = RequestMethod.GET, value = "/clients")
public @ResponseBody List getClients(
    @RequestParam(value = "estat", required = false) String estat
    throws Exception {

List<Clients> l = s.mdClients(estat);
return l;
}

I also needed to change my output-conversion method, using

<mvc:annotation-driven /> 

in my servlet-context.xml, in order to use jackson library for the json conversion of my list.

The output now:

[
  {
   "x": "2",
   "y": "5"
  }
]