Custom ObjectMapper with Jersey 2.2 and Jackson 2.1

The following solution applies to the following stack (as in... this is the setup I've used to test it)

Jersey 2.12, Jackson 2.4.x

I'm adding my message w/ the solution I've come up with on this post since it was quite relevant for the many Google searches I've put in today... It is a cumbersome solution to what I believe to be an even more cumbersome problem.

1. Make sure your maven configuration CONTAINS the jackson-jaxrs-json-provider dependency:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.jaxrs</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackson-jaxrs-json-provider</artifactId>
    <version>2.4.1</version>
</dependency>

2. Make sure your maven configuration DOESN'T CONTAIN the jersey-media-json-jackson dependency:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.glassfish.jersey.media</groupId>
    <artifactId>jersey-media-json-jackson</artifactId>
</dependency>

3. Create a @Provider component extending com.fasterxml.jackson.jaxrs.json.JacksonJaxbJsonProvider like so:

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonAutoDetect;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonInclude;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.PropertyAccessor;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.DeserializationFeature;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.SerializationFeature;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.jaxrs.json.JacksonJaxbJsonProvider;

import javax.ws.rs.Produces;
import javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType;
import javax.ws.rs.ext.Provider;

@Provider
@Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
public class CustomJsonProvider extends JacksonJaxbJsonProvider {

    private static ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();

    static {
        mapper.configure(DeserializationFeature.FAIL_ON_UNKNOWN_PROPERTIES, false);
        mapper.setSerializationInclusion(JsonInclude.Include.ALWAYS);
        mapper.setVisibility(PropertyAccessor.ALL, JsonAutoDetect.Visibility.ANY);
        mapper.enable(SerializationFeature.INDENT_OUTPUT);
     }

    public CustomJsonProvider() {
        super();
        setMapper(mapper);
    }
}

As you can observe this is also where we define the custom instance of com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper

4. Extend javax.ws.rs.core.Feature via MarshallingFeature like so:

import javax.ws.rs.core.Feature;
import javax.ws.rs.core.FeatureContext;
import javax.ws.rs.ext.MessageBodyReader;
import javax.ws.rs.ext.MessageBodyWriter;

public class MarshallingFeature implements Feature {

    @Override
    public boolean configure(FeatureContext context) {
        context.register(CustomJsonProvider.class, MessageBodyReader.class, MessageBodyWriter.class);
        return true;
    }
}

5. You need to register this custom provider like so, provided you configure your application via org.glassfish.jersey.server.ResourceConfig like so:

import org.glassfish.jersey.server.ResourceConfig;
...

public class MyApplication extends ResourceConfig {

    public MyApplication() {

        ...
        register(MarshallingFeature.class);
        ...
     }
 }

Other notes and observations:

1. This solution applies whether you're using javax.ws.rs.core.Response to wrap your controller's responses or not.
2. Please make sure you carefully take into consideration (copy/paste) the following code snippets since the only "non-mandatory" so to speak bits are the ones regarding the custom configuration of the com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper.

@jcreason

Sorry for dropping the ball on this one @jcreason, I hope you're still curios. So I checked out the code from last year and this is what I came up w/ to provide a custom mapper.

The problem was that during feature initalization any custom object mappers get disabled by some code in

org.glassfish.jersey.jackson.JacksonFeature:77 (jersey-media-json-jackson-2.12.jar)

// Disable other JSON providers.
context.property(PropertiesHelper.getPropertyNameForRuntime(InternalProperties.JSON_FEATURE, config.getRuntimeType()), JSON_FEATURE);

But this feature only gets registered by this component

org.glassfish.jersey.jackson.internal.JacksonAutoDiscoverable

if (!context.getConfiguration().isRegistered(JacksonFeature.class)) {
    context.register(JacksonFeature.class);
}

So what I did was to register my own feature which registeres my own object mapper provider and drops in a trip wire stopping org.glassfish.jersey.jackson.JacksonFeature from being registered and overriding my object mapper...

import com.fasterxml.jackson.jaxrs.base.JsonMappingExceptionMapper;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.jaxrs.base.JsonParseExceptionMapper;

import org.glassfish.jersey.internal.InternalProperties;
import org.glassfish.jersey.internal.util.PropertiesHelper;
import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;

import javax.ws.rs.core.Configuration;
import javax.ws.rs.core.Feature;
import javax.ws.rs.core.FeatureContext;
import javax.ws.rs.ext.MessageBodyReader;
import javax.ws.rs.ext.MessageBodyWriter;

public class MarshallingFeature implements Feature {

    private final static String JSON_FEATURE = MarshallingFeature.class.getSimpleName();

    @Override
    public boolean configure(FeatureContext context) {

      context.register(JsonParseExceptionMapper.class);
      context.register(JsonMappingExceptionMapper.class);
      context.register(JacksonJsonProviderAtRest.class, MessageBodyReader.class, MessageBodyWriter.class);

      final Configuration config = context.getConfiguration();
      // Disables discoverability of org.glassfish.jersey.jackson.JacksonFeature
      context.property(
          PropertiesHelper.getPropertyNameForRuntime(InternalProperties.JSON_FEATURE,
                                                     config.getRuntimeType()), JSON_FEATURE);

      return true;
    }
}

And here is the custom object mapper provider...

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonAutoDetect;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonInclude;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.PropertyAccessor;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.DeserializationFeature;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.SerializationFeature;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.jaxrs.json.JacksonJaxbJsonProvider;

import javax.ws.rs.Produces;
import javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType;
import javax.ws.rs.ext.Provider;

@Provider
@Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
public class JacksonJsonProviderAtRest extends JacksonJaxbJsonProvider {

    private static ObjectMapper objectMapperAtRest = new ObjectMapper();

    static {
        objectMapperAtRest.setVisibility(PropertyAccessor.ALL, JsonAutoDetect.Visibility.ANY);
        objectMapperAtRest.configure(DeserializationFeature.FAIL_ON_UNKNOWN_PROPERTIES, false);
        objectMapperAtRest.configure(SerializationFeature.INDENT_OUTPUT, true); // Different from default so you can test it :)
        objectMapperAtRest.setSerializationInclusion(JsonInclude.Include.ALWAYS);
    }

    public JacksonJsonProviderAtRest() {
        super();
        setMapper(objectMapperAtRest);
    }
}

I found a solution. I had to instantiate the Jackson Provider by myself and set my custom ObjectMapper. A working example can be found on GitHub: https://github.com/svenwltr/example-grizzly-jersey-jackson/tree/stackoverflow-answer

I deleted my ObjectMapperResolver and modified my main method:

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
            // create custom ObjectMapper
            ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
            mapper.enable(SerializationFeature.INDENT_OUTPUT);

            // create JsonProvider to provide custom ObjectMapper
            JacksonJaxbJsonProvider provider = new JacksonJaxbJsonProvider();
            provider.setMapper(mapper);

            // configure REST service
            ResourceConfig rc = new ResourceConfig();
            rc.register(ExampleResource.class);
            rc.register(provider);

            // create Grizzly instance and add handler
            HttpHandler handler = ContainerFactory.createContainer(
                    GrizzlyHttpContainer.class, rc);
            URI uri = new URI("http://0.0.0.0:8080/");
            HttpServer server = GrizzlyHttpServerFactory.createHttpServer(uri);
            ServerConfiguration config = server.getServerConfiguration();
            config.addHttpHandler(handler, "/");

            // start
            server.start();
            System.in.read();

        } catch (ProcessingException | URISyntaxException | IOException e) {
            throw new Error("Unable to create HTTP server.", e);
        }
    }
}