Jackson Annotations - @JsonBackReference

@JsonManagedReferences and JsonBackReferences are used to display objects with parent child relationship. @JsonManagedReferences is used to refer to parent object and @JsonBackReferences is used to mark child objects.

Example - @JsonBackReferences

import java.io.IOException;
import java.text.ParseException;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.List;

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonBackReference;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonManagedReference;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;

public class JacksonTester {
   public static void main(String args[]) throws IOException, ParseException {
      ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();     
      Student student = new Student(1, "Mark");
      Book book1 = new Book(1,"Learn HTML", student);
      Book book2 = new Book(1,"Learn JAVA", student);

      student.addBook(book1);
      student.addBook(book2);

      String jsonString = mapper
         .writerWithDefaultPrettyPrinter()
         .writeValueAsString(book1);
      System.out.println(jsonString);
   }
}
class Student { 
   public int rollNo;
   public String name;

   @JsonBackReference
   public List<Book> books;

   Student(int rollNo, String name){
      this.rollNo = rollNo;
      this.name = name;
      this.books = new ArrayList<Book>();
   }
   public void addBook(Book book){
      books.add(book);
   }
}
class Book {
   public int id;
   public String name;

   Book(int id, String name, Student owner) {
      this.id = id;
      this.name = name;
      this.owner = owner;
   }

   @JsonManagedReference
   public Student owner;
}

Output

{
   "id" : 1,
   "name" : "Learn HTML",
   "owner" : {
      "rollNo" : 1,
      "name" : "Mark"
   }
}