Fowler SR2 breaks Fowler SR1 with deviation in auto generated JSON structure [DATAREST-629]

Rakesh opened DATAREST-629 and commented

Hi,

Upto Fowler-SR1 release, when I hit a Spring Data REST repository, I used to get the below structure as output

{
  "links" : [ {
    "rel" : "search",
    "href" : "http://localhost/spring/ProductStatus/search"
  } ],
  "content" : [ {
    "productStatusCode" : "AVL",
    "productStatusDesc" : "Available",
    "isInactive" : false,
    "links" : [ ],
    "content" : [ ],
    "links" : [ {
      "rel" : "self",
      "href" : "http://localhost/spring/ProductStatus/AVL"
    } ]
  }, {
    "productStatusCode" : "DEA",
    "productStatusDesc" : "Retired",
    "isInactive" : false,
    "links" : [ ],
    "content" : [ ],
    "links" : [ {
      "rel" : "self",
      "href" : "http://localhost/spring/ProductStatus/DEA"
    } ]
  } ]
}

After I upgrading to Fowler-SR2, the output I get, without any changes to the underlying JPA entity/Repository configuration is as below

{
  "_links" : {
    "search" : {
      "href" : "http://localhost/spring/ProductStatus/search"
    }
  },
  "_embedded" : {
    "ProductStatus" : [ {
      "productStatusCode" : "AVL",
      "productStatusDesc" : "Available",
      "isInactive" : false,
      "_links" : {
        "self" : {
          "href" : "http://localhost/spring/ProductStatus/AVL"
        }
      }
    }, {
      "productStatusCode" : "DEA",
      "productStatusDesc" : "Retired",
      "isInactive" : false,
      "_links" : {
        "self" : {
          "href" : "http://localhost/spring/ProductStatus/DEA"
        }
      }
    }]
  }
}

This is causing all my client code to break!

Affects: 2.3.2 (Fowler SR2)