@Target(value={ANNOTATION_TYPE,METHOD,FIELD,TYPE,PARAMETER})
@Retention(value=RUNTIME)
public @interface JsonInclude

Annotation used to indicate when value of the annotated property (when used for a field, method or constructor parameter), or all properties of the annotated class, is to be serialized. Without annotation property values are always included, but by using this annotation one can specify simple exclusion rules to reduce amount of properties to write out.

Note that the main inclusion criteria (one annotated with value()) is checked on Java object level, for the annotated type, and NOT on JSON output -- so even with JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL it is possible that JSON null values are output, if object reference in question is not `null`. An example is AtomicReference instance constructed to reference null value: such a value would be serialized as JSON null, and not filtered out.

To base inclusion on value of contained value(s), you will typically also need to specify content() annotation; for example, specifying only value() as JsonInclude.Include.NON_EMPTY for a {link java.util.Map} would exclude Maps with no values, but would include Maps with `null` values. To exclude Map with only `null` value, you would use both annotations like so:

public class Bean {
   @JsonInclude(value=Include.NON_EMPTY, content=Include.NON_NULL)
   public Map<String,String> entries;
}

Similarly you could Maps that only contain "empty" elements, or "non-default" values (see JsonInclude.Include.NON_EMPTY and JsonInclude.Include.NON_DEFAULT for more details).

In addition to `Map`s, `content` concept is also supported for referential types (like AtomicReference). Note that `content` is NOT currently (as of Jackson 2.9) supported for arrays or Collections, but supported may be added in future versions.