Spring boot + Jackson. How to serialize collections which have null value as empty lists?

Question

In my entity I have:

private Set<Account> accounts;

Now it is being serialized like this:

"accounts": null

I need to change it to

"accounts": []

I have many (150+) entities which have this problem - how can configure jackson mapper to achieve this?

Answer 1

You could remove the "accounts" completely from the json annotating your pojo with:

@JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL)

maybe this helps

Answer 2

I think declaring your set like this will work...

private Set<Account> accounts = new HashSet<>();

It's then an empty set when marshalling and not null.