How Can I Format Java 8 LocalDateTime Objects Concisely in JSON with Spring Boot?

Formatting Java 8 LocalDateTime in JSON via Spring Boot

Maintaining a consistent and intuitive format for temporal data during serialization and deserialization is essential in modern application development. However, formatting Java 8 LocalDateTime objects in Spring Boot applications can often present challenges.

Problem:

When attempting to format LocalDateTime objects within Spring Boot applications, users may encounter a verbose output similar to the following:

"startDate" : {
    "year" : 2010,
    "month" : "JANUARY",
    "dayOfMonth" : 1,
    "dayOfWeek" : "FRIDAY",
    "dayOfYear" : 1,
    "monthValue" : 1,
    "hour" : 2,
    "minute" : 2,
    "second" : 0,
    "nano" : 0,
    "chronology" : {
      "id" : "ISO",
      "calendarType" : "iso8601"
    }
  }

Desired Outcome:

The goal is to format LocalDateTime objects into a more concise and readable format, such as:

"startDate": "2015-01-01"

Solution:

To achieve the desired formatting, users must first add the following dependency to their project:

compile("com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype:jackson-datatype-jsr310:2.4.0")

This dependency introduces a converter that automatically handles the transformation of LocalDateTime objects. Additionally, the following configuration must be added to the application.properties file:

spring.jackson.serialization.write_dates_as_timestamps=false

By setting this property to false, Spring will utilize the appropriate converter to format dates as strings instead of timestamps. If specific formatting is desired, annotations such as @JsonFormat and @DateTimeFormat can be used.

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