Since today a better support for JSON data generated out of JAXB beans is available in Jersey.

The main improvement is a simpler default JSON data format.
Badgerfish convention was replaced by a new one, a slightly simplified so called mapped convention from Jettison. JSON convention used for particular beans is now also fully configurable by the end user.
I will show how the configuration could be done below.

The main differences between available formats could be described using the following example.
Lets start with a very simple JAXB bean. You can see the source code, XML output and then
all formats you can get from Jersey resource:

@XmlRootElement

public static class SimpleJaxbBean {

   public String name = "Franz";

   public String surname = "Kafka";

}

XML output:

<simpleJaxbBean>

  <name>Franz</name>

  <surname>Kafka</surname>

</simpleJaxbBean>

Badgerfish format:

{"simpleJaxbBean":{"name":{"$":"Franz"},"surname":{"$":"Kafka"}}}

Mapped format (Jettison):

{"simpleJaxbBean":{"name":"Franz","surname":"Kafka"}}

and finally Jersey default format:

{"name":"Franz","surname":"Kafka"}

If you want to control, which format is actually used for which JAXB bean,
you can do it by providing Jersey runtime with your own custom JAXBContext classes
via implementing custom ContextResolver.

You can get inspired by following example:

@Path("/jsonFormats")

public class SimpleJsonResource {

    
@Provider

    public static class JAXBContextResolver implements ContextResolver<JAXBContext> { 



        private JAXBContext context;

        private Class[] types = {SimpleJaxbBean.class};


        public JAXBContextResolver() throws Exception {

            Map<String, Object> props = new HashMap<String, Object>();

            props.put(JSONJAXBContext.JSON_NOTATION, "MAPPED_JETTISON");

            props.put(JSONJAXBContext.JSON_ROOT_UNWRAPPING, Boolean.FALSE);

            this.context = new JSONJAXBContext(types, props);

        }


        public JAXBContext getContext(Class<?> objectType) {

            return (types[0].equals(objectType)) ? context : null;

        }

    }



    @XmlRootElement

    public static class SimpleJaxbBean {

        public String name = "Franz";

        public String surname = "Kafka";

    }


    @GET

    @ProduceMime({"application/json", "application/xml"})

    public SimpleJaxbBean getJson() {

        return new SimpleJaxbBean();

    }

}

The following options are available for the JSONJAXBContext.JSON_NOTATION
property, where the first one is the default value:

• MAPPED
  
• MAPPED_JETTISON
  
• BADGERFISH
  

In the future i plan to add more properties so that the JSON serialization and deserialization
is highly configurable.