Issue with XML Serialization of Complex Objects in Spring Boot - Unexpected Null Values
I'm performance testing and I've been banging my head against this for hours. I'm facing an issue with XML serialization in my Spring Boot application where some complex objects are being serialized with unexpected null values. I'm using Jackson's XML extension (version 2.12.3) for this purpose. The objects I'm trying to serialize contain nested fields and collections, and it seems like Jackson is not picking up those values correctly when I convert them to XML. Here's a simplified version of the class structure: ```java @XmlRootElement public class Order { private String orderId; private Customer customer; private List<Item> items; // Getters and setters } @XmlRootElement public class Customer { private String name; private String email; // Getters and setters } @XmlRootElement public class Item { private String productId; private int quantity; // Getters and setters } ``` When I serialize an `Order` object that contains a `Customer` and a list of `Item` objects, I sometimes get an XML output like this: ```xml <order> <orderId>12345</orderId> <customer> <name>John Doe</name> <email></email> </customer> <items> <item> <productId>p001</productId> <quantity>2</quantity> </item> </items> </order> ``` You can see that the `email` field is serialized as an empty tag instead of being omitted. I’ve tried adding the `@XmlTransient` annotation to the email field, but it didn’t resolve the issue. Also, I've ensured that the `customer` and `items` fields are initialized properly before serialization, yet they still produce null values in some cases. To troubleshoot, I've attempted to manually serialize the object using the `XmlMapper` as follows: ```java XmlMapper xmlMapper = new XmlMapper(); String xmlOutput = xmlMapper.writeValueAsString(order); System.out.println(xmlOutput); ``` This code outputs the same unexpected null values. Am I missing something in the configuration or annotations? How can I ensure that properties with null values are omitted from the output altogether, or at least handle them properly? Any guidance would be highly appreciated! I'm working on a web app that needs to handle this. I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. I'm coming from a different tech stack and learning Java. I appreciate any insights!