Only using @JsonIgnore during serialization, but not deserialization

Exactly how to do this depends on the version of Jackson that you're using. This changed around version 1.9, before that, you could do this by adding @JsonIgnore to the getter.

Which you've tried:

Add @JsonIgnore on the getter method only

Do this, and also add a specific @JsonProperty annotation for your JSON "password" field name to the setter method for the password on your object.

More recent versions of Jackson have added READ_ONLY and WRITE_ONLY annotation arguments for JsonProperty. So you could also do something like:

@JsonProperty(access = JsonProperty.Access.WRITE_ONLY)
private String password;

Docs can be found here.

In order to accomplish this, all that we need is two annotations:

1. @JsonIgnore
2. @JsonProperty

Use @JsonIgnore on the class member and its getter, and @JsonProperty on its setter. A sample illustration would help to do this:

class User {

    // More fields here
    @JsonIgnore
    private String password;

    @JsonIgnore
    public String getPassword() {
        return password;
    }

    @JsonProperty
    public void setPassword(final String password) {
        this.password = password;
    }
}

Since version 2.6: a more intuitive way is to use the com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonProperty annotation on the field:

@JsonProperty(access = Access.WRITE_ONLY)
private String myField;

Even if a getter exists, the field value is excluded from serialization.

JavaDoc says:

/**
 * Access setting that means that the property may only be written (set)
 * for deserialization,
 * but will not be read (get) on serialization, that is, the value of the property
 * is not included in serialization.
 */
WRITE_ONLY

In case you need it the other way around, just use Access.READ_ONLY.

In my case, I have Jackson automatically (de)serializing objects that I return from a Spring MVC controller (I am using @RestController with Spring 4.1.6). I had to use com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonIgnore instead of org.codehaus.jackson.annotate.JsonIgnore, as otherwise, it simply did nothing.

Another easy way to handle this is to use the argument allowSetters=truein the annotation. This will allow the password to be deserialized into your dto but it will not serialize it into a response body that uses contains object.

example:

@JsonIgnoreProperties(allowSetters = true, value = {"bar"})
class Pojo{
    String foo;
    String bar;
}

Both foo and bar are populated in the object, but only foo is written into a response body.