How to represent optional fields in spray-json?

Question

I have an optional field on my requests:

case class SearchRequest(url: String, nextAt: Option[Date])

My protocol is:

object SearchRequestJsonProtocol extends DefaultJsonProtocol {
    implicit val searchRequestFormat = jsonFormat(SearchRequest, "url", "nextAt")
}

How do I mark the nextAt field optional, such that the following JSON objects will be correctly read and accepted:

{"url":"..."}
{"url":"...", "nextAt":null}
{"url":"...", "nextAt":"2012-05-30T15:23Z"}

I actually don't really care about the null case, but if you have details, it would be nice. I'm using spray-json, and was under the impression that using an Option would skip the field if it was absent on the original JSON object.

Answer 1

Works for me (spray-json 1.1.1 scala 2.9.1 build)

import cc.spray.json._
import cc.spray.json.DefaultJsonProtocol._

// string instead of date for simplicity
case class SearchRequest(url: String, nextAt: Option[String])

// btw, you could use jsonFormat2 method here
implicit val searchRequestFormat = jsonFormat(SearchRequest, "url", "nextAt")

assert {
  List(
    """{"url":"..."}""",
    """{"url":"...", "nextAt":null}""",
    """{"url":"...", "nextAt":"2012-05-30T15:23Z"}""")
  .map(_.asJson.convertTo[SearchRequest]) == List(
    SearchRequest("...", None),
    SearchRequest("...", None),
    SearchRequest("...", Some("2012-05-30T15:23Z")))
}