Provide built-in support for serializing a jOOQ Record to json

Expected behavior

Consider a query returning a jOOQ Record (e.g., CustomerRecord) and the following Spring Boot REST Controller:

@GetMapping("/customer")
public CustomerRecord findAnyCustomer() {

    return {some_CustomerRecord};
}

Expecting that the default Spring Boot (Jackson based) serializer will output a JSON containing the CustomerRecord data.

Actual behavior

Initially, it throws an exception: com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.InvalidDefinitionException: No serializer found for class org.jooq.TableOptions and no properties discovered to create BeanSerializer (to avoid exception, disable SerializationFeature.FAIL_ON_EMPTY_BEANS) (through reference chain: jooq.generated.tables.records.CustomerRecord[“table”]->jooq.generated.tables.Customer[“options”])

After setting FAIL_ON_EMPTY_BEANS in application.properties I got a relatively big JSON that looks like this fragment: {“table”:{“name”:“customer”,“comment”:“”,“options”:{},“identity”:{“table”:{“name”:“customer”,“comment”:“”,“options”:{},“identity”:{“table”:{“name”:“customer”,“comment”:" …

Versions

• Spring Boot: 2.3.6.RELEASE
• jOOQ: 3.14.4
• Java: 14 (Spring Boot 2.3.6)

[lukaseder]

Well, a quick draft of letting Record <: Map<String, Object> (full comments to be seen here: https://github.com/jOOQ/jOOQ/issues/11889#issuecomment-841134429) yields very promising results:

var r2 = DSL.using(connection)
    .select(
        T_BOOK.ID,
        T_BOOK.fkTBookAuthorId().ID,
        row(T_BOOK.fkTBookAuthorId().FIRST_NAME, T_BOOK.fkTBookAuthorId().LAST_NAME).as("author"),
        array(select(row(T_BOOK_TO_BOOK_STORE.tBookStore().NAME, T_BOOK_TO_BOOK_STORE.STOCK))
            .from(T_BOOK_TO_BOOK_STORE)
            .where(T_BOOK_TO_BOOK_STORE.BOOK_ID.eq(T_BOOK.ID))).as("stock")
    )
    .from(T_BOOK)
    .fetch();
System.out.println(new ObjectMapper().writeValueAsString(r2));
System.out.println(new Gson().toJson(r2));

Producing this jOOQ result structure:

+----+----+----------------+--------------------------------------------------+
|  id|  id|author          |stock                                             |
+----+----+----------------+--------------------------------------------------+
|   2|   1|(George, Orwell)|[(Orell Füssli, 10)]                              |
|   1|   1|(George, Orwell)|[(Orell Füssli, 10), (Ex Libris, 1)]              |
|   4|   2|(Paulo, Coelho) |[]                                                |
|   3|   2|(Paulo, Coelho) |[(Orell Füssli, 10), (Ex Libris, 2), (Buchhandl...|
+----+----+----------------+--------------------------------------------------+

And then getting auto serialised by both Jackson and Gson to something like this:

[
   {
      "id":2,
      "id":1,
      "author":{
         "first_name":"George",
         "last_name":"Orwell"
      },
      "stock":[
         {
            "v0":"Orell Füssli",
            "v1":"10"
         }
      ]
   },
   {
      "id":1,
      "author":{
         "first_name":"George",
         "last_name":"Orwell"
      },
      "stock":[
         {
            "v0":"Orell Füssli",
            "v1":"10"
         },
         {
            "v0":"Ex Libris",
            "v1":"1"
         }
      ]
   },
   {
      "id":4,
      "id":2,
      "author":{
         "first_name":"Paulo",
         "last_name":"Coelho"
      },
      "stock":[
         
      ]
   },
   {
      "id":3,
      "id":2,
      "author":{
         "first_name":"Paulo",
         "last_name":"Coelho"
      },
      "stock":[
         {
            "v0":"Orell Füssli",
            "v1":"10"
         },
         {
            "v0":"Ex Libris",
            "v1":"2"
         },
         {
            "v0":"Buchhandlung im Volkshaus",
            "v1":"1"
         }
      ]
   }
]

We’re onto something. I think that this is exactly what everyone wants from jOOQ, and Spring Boot doesn’t need to change a thing (I think?) 😀

[lukaseder]

Sure, greatly appreciated. I still wonder why the perception is different. Habits? People have requested a Record representation (e.g. formatting) like this:

ID: 1
FIRST_NAME: John
LAST_NAME: Doe

Kinda like in the old days with Informix, etc.

With that representation, the Iterable<Entry<String, Object>> type seems more obvious, and all the Map goodies, like Map.forEach(BiConsumer<? super String, ? super Object>) do, too…

Anyway. This issue here is about Spring Boot, and I agree that Spring Boot doesn’t need to take action. jOOQ might: https://github.com/jOOQ/jOOQ/issues/11889, and users already can, via intoMap()