Very often we land in situation with cyclic reference if target entity has self references. There are multiple solution available over internet, but none of these will solve your problem. The only option is left to write own depth wise serializer.

This example is based on spring-data-jpa. Hence forth I will use entity which is used in a spring-data-jpa project. Our target entity is User which extends AbstractAuditableEntity. Here we have two properties createdBy and lastModifiedBy referencing to User entity.

@SuppressWarnings("serial")
@Entity
@Table(name = "user")
public class User extends AbstractAuditableEntity {

    private String firstName;

    private String lastName;

    public String getFirstName() {
        return firstName;
    }

    public void setFirstName(String firstName) {
        this.firstName = firstName;
    }

    public String getLastName() {
        return lastName;
    }

    public void setLastName(String lastName) {
        this.lastName = lastName;
    }

}


@SuppressWarnings("serial")
@MappedSuperclass
@EntityListeners(AuditingEntityListener.class)
public class AbstractAuditableEntity extends AbstractPersistable<Long> implements Auditable<User, Long> {

    @Version
    protected Long version;

    @Type(type = "org.jadira.usertype.dateandtime.joda.PersistentDateTime")
    @DateTimeFormat(iso = ISO.DATE_TIME)
    protected DateTime createdDate;

    @Type(type = "org.jadira.usertype.dateandtime.joda.PersistentDateTime")
    @DateTimeFormat(iso = ISO.DATE_TIME)
    protected DateTime lastModifiedDate;

    protected User createdBy;

    protected User lastModifiedBy;

    @Enumerated(EnumType.STRING)
    protected StatusType status;

    public Long getVersion() {
        return version;
    }

    public void setVersion(Long version) {
        this.version = version;
    }

    public DateTime getCreatedDate() {
        return createdDate;
    }

    public void setCreatedDate(DateTime createdDate) {
        this.createdDate = createdDate;
    }

    public DateTime getLastModifiedDate() {
        return lastModifiedDate;
    }

    public void setLastModifiedDate(DateTime lastModifiedDate) {
        this.lastModifiedDate = lastModifiedDate;
    }

    public User getCreatedBy() {
        return createdBy;
    }

    public void setCreatedBy(User createdBy) {
        this.createdBy = createdBy;
    }

    public User getLastModifiedBy() {
        return lastModifiedBy;
    }

    public void setLastModifiedBy(User lastModifiedBy) {
        this.lastModifiedBy = lastModifiedBy;
    }

    public StatusType getStatus() {
        return status;
    }

    public void setStatus(StatusType status) {
        this.status = status;
    }

}

Test Case

@Test
public void serialize() throws JsonProcessingException {

    User user = new User();
    user.setFirstName("First Name");
    user.setLastName("Last Name");

    user.setCreatedBy(user);
    user.setLastModifiedBy(user);

    ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();

    String userString = objectMapper.writeValueAsString(user);
    System.out.println("JSON String :: " + userString);
}

com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.JsonMappingException: Direct self-reference leading to cycle (through reference chain: com.abid.learning.serialization.entity.User["createdBy"])
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ser.BeanPropertyWriter._handleSelfReference(BeanPropertyWriter.java:667)
    at com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ser.BeanPropertyWriter.serializeAsField(BeanPropertyWriter.java:540)

Serializer

private static ThreadLocal<Integer> depth = new ThreadLocal<Integer>() {

        @Override
        protected Integer initialValue() {
            return 0;
        }

    };

depth.set(depth.get() + 1);
if (depth.get() > 2) {
                jgen.writeNull();
} else {
  ...
}

public class UserJsonSerializer extends JsonSerializer<User> {

    private static ThreadLocal<Integer> depth = new ThreadLocal<Integer>() {

        @Override
        protected Integer initialValue() {
            return 0;
        }

    };

    @Override
    public void serialize(User value, JsonGenerator jgen,
            SerializerProvider provider) throws IOException,
            JsonProcessingException {

        depth.set(depth.get() + 1);
        try {
            if (depth.get() > 2) {
                jgen.writeNull();
            } else {

                jgen.writeStartObject();
                jgen.writeStringField("firstName", value.getFirstName());
                jgen.writeStringField("lastName", value.getLastName());

                User createdByUser = value.getCreatedBy();
                if (null != createdByUser) {
                    jgen.writeStringField(
                            "createdBy",
                            createdByUser.getFirstName() + " "
                                    + createdByUser.getLastName());
                }

                User lastModifiedByUser = value.getLastModifiedBy();
                if (null != lastModifiedByUser) {
                    jgen.writeStringField("lastModifiedBy",
                            lastModifiedByUser.getFirstName() + " "
                                    + lastModifiedByUser.getLastName());
                }

                jgen.writeEndObject();

                return;

            }
        } catch (Exception ex) {
            ex.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

}

Updated Test Case

ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();
SimpleModule userModule = new SimpleModule();
userModule.addSerializer(User.class, new UserJsonSerializer());
objectMapper.registerModule(userModule);

public class UserTest {

    @Test
    public void serialize() throws JsonProcessingException {

        User user = new User();
        user.setFirstName("First Name");
        user.setLastName("Last Name");
        user.setCreatedBy(user);
        user.setLastModifiedBy(user);

        ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();
        SimpleModule userModule = new SimpleModule();
        userModule.addSerializer(User.class, new UserJsonSerializer());
        objectMapper.registerModule(userModule);

        String userString = objectMapper.writeValueAsString(user);
        System.out.println("JSON String :: " + userString);
    }
}

JSON String :: {"firstName":"First Name","lastName":"Last Name","createdBy":"First Name Last Name","lastModifiedBy":"First Name Last Name"}

Summary