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Handling Custom Date Formats in Spring Boot with Jackson and LocalDate

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spring-boot jackson localdate Java

I'm writing unit tests and I'm dealing with I need some guidance on I'm working on a Spring Boot application and trying to serialize and deserialize `LocalDate` fields using Jackson with a specific date format ('yyyy-MM-dd')... Despite configuring the date format via `@JsonFormat`, I'm running into issues where the dates are not being serialized correctly, and I receive a `JsonMappingException`. Here's what I have so far: In my model, I've annotated the `LocalDate` field like this: ```java import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonFormat; import java.time.LocalDate; public class User { @JsonFormat(shape = JsonFormat.Shape.STRING, pattern = "yyyy-MM-dd") private LocalDate dateOfBirth; // getters and setters } ``` The question arises when I try to serialize an instance of `User`. The JSON output looks like this: ```json { "dateOfBirth": "2023-15-10" } ``` This is not a valid date, and I expected it to throw a proper behavior. Instead, it just ignores the format and uses the default one. On the deserialization side, when I send a request with a date like '2023-10-15', I get the following behavior: ``` com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.InvalidFormatException: want to deserialize value of type `java.time.LocalDate` from String "2023-15-10": not a valid representation (behavior: Failed to parse Date value '2023-15-10': want to parse "15" as day of month) ``` I've tried registering a custom `ObjectMapper` bean in my configuration: ```java import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper; import com.fasterxml.jackson.datatype.jsr310.JavaTimeModule; import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean; import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration; @Configuration public class JacksonConfig { @Bean public ObjectMapper objectMapper() { ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper(); mapper.registerModule(new JavaTimeModule()); return mapper; } } ``` But this hasn't resolved the scenario. I’m unsure if I’m missing something regarding configuration or if the question lies elsewhere in my Spring Boot setup. Is there a specific setup or best practice I should follow to ensure correct serialization/deserialization of `LocalDate` in this format? I'm working on a service that needs to handle this. Any suggestions would be helpful. Any advice would be much appreciated. Any ideas how to fix this? What's the best practice here?