Customize Spring JSON output

Spring uses Jackson JSON from http://jackson.codehaus.org/ to serialize an object for json output. To change the default strategy to serialize/format a field in a bean, you can easily create your own serializer. Following is an example to customize date format in json oupt

1. Creat serializer

public class CustomDateSerializer extends JsonSerializer {
 public static Log logger=LogFactory.getLog(CustomDateSerializer.class);
 
 @Override
 public void serialize(Date value, JsonGenerator gen, SerializerProvider arg2) throws IOException, JsonProcessingException {
  
  SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("MM-dd-yyyy");
                String formattedDate = formatter.format(value);

  gen.writeString(formattedDate);

 }
}

2. Annotate bean property to use the serializer

public class TransactionHistoryBean{
  private Date date;

  @JsonSerialize(using = CustomDateSerializer.class)
  public Date getDate() {
      return date;
  }
}