Why LocalDate format changed when I transform entity to Json?

My objective is to store dates into a database. To do this app I use Springboot, JPA, H2, ...

I use LocalDate and the format wished is yyyy-MM-dd.

Entity

@Entity
public class MyObject {

    @Id
    private String id;
    private LocalDate startdate;
    private LocalDate enddate;

    public MyObject() {}

    public MyObject(LocalDate enddate) {
        this.startdate = LocalDate.now();
        this.enddate = enddate;
    }

    ...
}

Main

private DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyy-MM-dd");
MyObject myObject = new MyObject(LocalDate.parse("2019-03-01", formatter));
myObject.setId(UUID.randomUUID().toString());
myObjectResource.save(myObject);

HttpHeaders headers = new HttpHeaders();
headers.setContentType(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON);
System.out.println(myObject.getStartdate()); // 2019-02-23
System.out.println(myObject.getEnddate()); // 2019-03-01
HttpEntity<String> entity = new HttpEntity<>(this.toJsonString(myObject), headers);
System.out.println(entity.toString()); // <{"id":"ba6649e4-6e65-4f54-8f1a-f8fc7143b05a","startdate":{"year":2019,"month":"FEBRUARY","dayOfMonth":23,"dayOfWeek":"SATURDAY","era":"CE","dayOfYear":54,"leapYear":false,"monthValue":2,"chronology":{"id":"ISO","calendarType":"iso8601"}},"enddate":{"year":2019,"month":"MARCH","dayOfMonth":1,"dayOfWeek":"FRIDAY","era":"CE","dayOfYear":60,"leapYear":false,"monthValue":3,"chronology":{"id":"ISO","calendarType":"iso8601"}}},[Content-Type:"application/json"]>

private String toJsonString(Object o) throws Exception {
    ObjectMapper om = new ObjectMapper();
    return om.writeValueAsString(o);
}

Can you help me to understand why dates in entity.toString() are not the same as before with getMethods() ?

Thanks for help!

Solution

LocalDate.parse returns a new LocalDate object. The formatting options specified in the DateTimeFormatter get lost aftwerward.

Jackson (the JSON library you're using) doesn't know how you previously "formatted" the LocalDate, so it uses its own formatting.

You can register the JavaTimeModule

final ObjectMapper om = new ObjectMapper();
om.registerModule(new JavaTimeModule());

Or you can provide your custom JsonSerializer<T>.