Scala - Circe - Case Class Serialization without Class Name

Question

I have used Circe previously for case class serialization / deserialization, and love how it can be used without the boilerplate code required by other Scala JSON libraries, but I'm running into an issue now I'm not sure how to resolve. I have an ADT (a sealed trait with several case class instances) that I would like to treat (from my Akka Http Service, using akka-http-json) generically (ie, return a List[Foo], where Foo is the trait-type), but when I do so using Circe's auto-deriviation (via Shapeless), it serializes the instances using the specific case class name as a 'discriminator' (eg, if my List[Foo] contains instances of Foo1, then each element in the resulting serialized list will have the key Foo1). I would like to eliminate the type name as a discriminator (ie, so that instead of having each element in the sequence prefixed with the type name-- eg, "Foo1": {"id : "1", name : "First",...}, I just want to serialize the case class instances to contain the fields of the case class: eg, {"id":"1,"name:"First",...}...Essentially, I'd like to eliminate the type name keys (I don't want the front-end to have to know what concrete case class each element belongs to on the back-end).

All elements in the list to be serialized will be of the same concrete-type, all of which would be subtypes of my ADT (trait) type. I believe this can be done using Circe's semi-auto derivation, though I haven't had a chance to figure out exactly how. Basically, I would like to use as much of Circe's auto-derivation as possible, but eliminate outer-level class names from appearing in the resulting JSON. Any help / suggestions would be very much appreciated! Thanks!

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 05 '19 at 13:49

you can do it following the instruction in the doc: https://circe.github.io/circe/codecs/adt.html

import cats.syntax.functor._
import io.circe.{ Decoder, Encoder }, io.circe.generic.auto._
import io.circe.syntax._

object GenericDerivation {
  implicit val encodeEvent: Encoder[Event] = Encoder.instance {
    case foo @ Foo(_) => foo.asJson
    case bar @ Bar(_) => bar.asJson
    case baz @ Baz(_) => baz.asJson
    case qux @ Qux(_) => qux.asJson
  }

  implicit val decodeEvent: Decoder[Event] =
    List[Decoder[Event]](
      Decoder[Foo].widen,
      Decoder[Bar].widen,
      Decoder[Baz].widen,
      Decoder[Qux].widen
    ).reduceLeft(_ or _)
}

import GenericDerivation._
import io.circe.parser.decode

decode[Event]("""{ "i": 1000 }""")
// res0: Either[io.circe.Error,Event] = Right(Foo(1000))

(Foo(100): Event).asJson.noSpaces
// res1: String = {"i":100}

score 0 · Answer 2 · edited Sep 05 '19 at 11:52

This may not be the best answer, but after some more searching this is what I've been able to find. Instead of having the class name as a key in the Json produced, it can be serialized as a field as following:

implicit val genDevConfig: Configuration = Configuration.default.withDescriminator("type")

(you can use whatever field name here you'd like; Travis Brown's previous example for a similar issue used a field named what_am_i). So my apologies-- I do not yet know if there is a canonical or widely accepted solution to this problem, especially one that will easily work with Akka Http, using libraries such as akka-http-json, where I still seem to be encountering some issues, though I'm sure I'm probably overlooking something obvious! Anyway, my apologies for asking a question that seems to come up repeatedly!

Scala - Circe - Case Class Serialization without Class Name

2 Answers2