Jackson, deserialize class with private fields and arg-constructor without annotations

Question

It is possible to deserialize to a class with private fields and a custom argument constructor without using annotations and without modifying the class, using Jackson?

I know it's possible in Jackson when using this combination: 1) Java 8, 2) compile with "-parameters" option, and 3) the parameters names match JSON. But it's also possible in GSON by default without all these restrictions.

For example:

public class Person {
    private final String firstName;
    private final String lastName;
    private final int age;

    public Person(String firstName, String lastName, int age) {
        this.firstName = firstName;
        this.lastName = lastName;
        this.age = age;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        String json = "{firstName: \"Foo\", lastName: \"Bar\", age: 30}";
        
        System.out.println("GSON: " + deserializeGson(json)); // works fine
        System.out.println("Jackson: " + deserializeJackson(json)); // error
    }

    public static Person deserializeJackson(String json) throws IOException {
        ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
        mapper.enable(JsonParser.Feature.ALLOW_UNQUOTED_FIELD_NAMES);
        mapper.setVisibility(PropertyAccessor.FIELD, JsonAutoDetect.Visibility.ANY);
        return mapper.readValue(json, Person.class);
    }

    public static Person deserializeGson(String json) {
        Gson gson = new GsonBuilder().create();
        return gson.fromJson(json, Person.class);
    }
}

Which works fine for GSON, but Jackson throws:

Exception in thread "main" com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.InvalidDefinitionException: Cannot construct instance of `jacksonParametersTest.Person` (no Creators, like default construct, exist): cannot deserialize from Object value (no delegate- or property-based Creator)
 at [Source: (String)"{firstName: "Foo", lastName: "Bar", age: 30}"; line: 1, column: 2]
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.InvalidDefinitionException.from(InvalidDefinitionException.java:67)

It's possible in GSON, so I would expect that there must be some way in Jackson without modifying the Person class, without Java 8, and without an explicit custom deserializer. Does anybody know a solution?

• Update, additional info

---

Gson seems to skip the argument constructor, so it must be creating a no-argument constructor behind the scenes using reflections.

Also, there exists a Kotlin Jackson module which is able to do this for Kotlin data classes, even without the "-parameters" compiler flag. So it is strange that such a solution doesn't seem to exist for Java Jackson.

This is the (nice and clean) solution available in Kotlin Jackson (which IMO should also become available in Java Jackson via a custom module):

val mapper = ObjectMapper()
    .enable(JsonParser.Feature.ALLOW_UNQUOTED_FIELD_NAMES)
    .registerModule(KotlinModule())     
        
val person: Person = mapper.readValue(json, Person::class.java)

Answer 1

Solution with mix-in annotations

You could use mix-in annotations. It's a great alternative when modifying the classes is not an option. You can think of it as kind of aspect-oriented way of adding more annotations during runtime, to augment the statically defined ones.

Assuming that your Person class is defined as follows:

public class Person {

    private final String firstName;
    private final String lastName;
    private final int age;

    public Person(String firstName, String lastName, int age) {
        this.firstName = firstName;
        this.lastName = lastName;
        this.age = age;
    }

    // Getters omitted
}

First define a mix-in annotation abstract class:

public abstract class PersonMixIn {

    PersonMixIn(@JsonProperty("firstName") String firstName,
                @JsonProperty("lastName") String lastName,
                @JsonProperty("age") int age) {
    }
}

Then configure ObjectMapper to use the defined class as a mix-in for your POJO:

ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
mapper.enable(JsonParser.Feature.ALLOW_UNQUOTED_FIELD_NAMES);
mapper.addMixIn(Person.class, PersonMixIn.class);

And deserialize the JSON:

String json = "{firstName: \"Foo\", lastName: \"Bar\", age: 30}";
Person person = mapper.readValue(json, Person.class);