jackson2 JSON ISO 8601 date from JodaTime in Spring 3.2RC1

Or, if you prefer doing your configuration in Java, it could look like this:

@Configuration@EnableWebMvcpublic class RestConfig extends WebMvcConfigurerAdapter {    private ObjectMapper objectMapper() {        Jackson2ObjectMapperFactoryBean bean = new Jackson2ObjectMapperFactoryBean();        bean.setIndentOutput(true);        bean.setSimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ");        bean.afterPropertiesSet();        ObjectMapper objectMapper = bean.getObject();        objectMapper.registerModule(new JodaModule());        return objectMapper;    }    private MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter mappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter() {        MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter converter = new MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter();        converter.setObjectMapper(objectMapper());        return converter;    }    @Override    public void configureMessageConverters(List<HttpMessageConverter<?>> converters) {        converters.add(mappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter());    }}

I eventually got it working using jackson-datatype-joda:

Add another Maven dependency (match your Jackson version number):

<dependency>    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype</groupId>    <artifactId>jackson-datatype-joda</artifactId>    <version>${jackson.version}</version></dependency>

Then register the JodaModule (which handles the conversion) to Jackson's ObjectMapper (here done in Spring, but you could create a helper class):

<bean class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.MethodInvokingFactoryBean"    p:targetObject-ref="objectMapper" p:targetMethod="registerModule">    <property name="arguments">        <list><bean class="com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype.joda.JodaModule"/></list>    </property></bean>

(You'll need to give the ObjectMapper an id so that it can be referenced in this way).

The Hibernate module is also registered in this way: https://github.com/FasterXML/jackson-module-hibernate

Note that you need to set a (Simple)DateFormat as shown in the question, but disabling SerializationFeature.WRITE_DATE_KEYS_AS_TIMESTAMPS didn't seem to make any difference.

Just to sum up answers and post working solution for JodaTime serialization in Spring (tested on Spring 3.2)

spring-context.xml

<bean id="objectMapper"    class="org.springframework.http.converter.json.Jackson2ObjectMapperFactoryBean"    p:indentOutput="true" p:simpleDateFormat="yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ"></bean><bean    class="org.springframework.beans.factory.config.MethodInvokingFactoryBean"    p:targetObject-ref="objectMapper" p:targetMethod="registerModule">    <property name="arguments">        <list>            <bean class="com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype.joda.JodaModule" />        </list>    </property></bean><mvc:annotation-driven>    <mvc:message-converters>        <bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.StringHttpMessageConverter" />        <bean            class="org.springframework.http.converter.ResourceHttpMessageConverter" />        <bean            class="org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJackson2HttpMessageConverter">            <property name="objectMapper" ref="objectMapper" />        </bean>    </mvc:message-converters></mvc:annotation-driven>

Maven dependencies (com.fasterxml.jackson-version is 2.1.1)

<dependency>    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>    <artifactId>jackson-core</artifactId>    <version>${com.fasterxml.jackson-version}</version></dependency><dependency>    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>    <artifactId>jackson-databind</artifactId>    <version>${com.fasterxml.jackson-version}</version></dependency><dependency>    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype</groupId>    <artifactId>jackson-datatype-joda</artifactId>    <version>${com.fasterxml.jackson-version}</version></dependency>

After this your JodaTime fields in ResponseBody will be automatically serialized in JSON as "createdDate" : "2013-01-18T15:15:36.365+02:00"