Does jackson throws the Cyclic exception?

Question

Does jackson Handles/throws the Cyclic exception like net.sf.json.JSONException: There is a cycle in the hierarchy! thrown in json-lib when it detects the cycle in java object that is to be converted in json. If so how can we handle it.

Error thrown in json-lib is as follow

    1169 SEVERE: Servlet.service() for servlet JSONControllerServletGZIP threw exception
    1170 net.sf.json.JSONException: There is a cycle in the hierarchy!
    1171     at net.sf.json.util.CycleDetectionStrategy$StrictCycleDetectionStrategy.handleRepeatedReferenceAsArray(CycleDetectionStra
    1172     at net.sf.json.JSONArray._fromCollection(JSONArray.java:749)
    1173     at net.sf.json.JSONArray.fromObject(JSONArray.java:165)
    1174     at net.sf.json.JSONObject._processValue(JSONObject.java:2132)
    1175     at net.sf.json.JSONObject._setInternal(JSONObject.java:2177)
    1176     at net.sf.json.JSONObject.setValue(JSONObject.java:1005)
    1177     at net.sf.json.JSONObject._fromMap(JSONObject.java:886)
    1178     at net.sf.json.JSONObject.fromObject(JSONObject.java:248)

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You want @JsonBackReference and @JsonManagedReference.

Answer 2

No, Jackson does not keep track of cyclic instances, except for special case of self-reference which is caught. As suggested, currently best way to deal with this is by use of annotations, at least in cases where you have parent/child style reference.