How To Keep The Time-Zone When Deserializing A ZonedDateTime With Jackson

The Problem: Jackson Loses The Time-Zone During Dezerialization Of A ZonedDateTime

In its default configuration Jackson adjusts the time-zone of a ZonedDateTime to the time-zone of the local context. As, by default, the time-zone of the local context is not set and has to be configured manually, Jackson adjusts the time-zone to GMT.

This behavior is very unintuitive and not well documented. It looks like Jackson just loses the time-zone during deserialization and, if you serialize and deserialize a ZonedDateTime, the result will not equal the original instance, because it has a different time-zone.

The Solution: Tell Jackson, Not To Adjust the Time-Zone

Fortunately, there is a quick and simple fix for this odd default-behavior: you just have to tell Jackson, not to adjust the time-zone. Tis can be done with this line of code:

mapper.disable(DeserializationFeature.ADJUST_DATES_TO_CONTEXT_TIME_ZONE);

Funded by the Europian Union

This article was published in the course of a resarch-project, that is funded by the European Union and the federal state Northrhine-Wetphalia.