Example of making Jackson behave more sensibly by default (also, more like Gson)

CustomObjectMapper.java

import com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonInclude;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.DeserializationFeature;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.SerializationFeature;

/**
 * ObjectMapper customised for my tastes and most typical needs
 * 
 * @author Joni Karppinen
 */
public class CustomObjectMapper extends ObjectMapper {

    public CustomObjectMapper() {
        // Deserialization
        
        // Just ignore unknown fields, don't stop parsing
        configure(DeserializationFeature.FAIL_ON_UNKNOWN_PROPERTIES, false);
        // Trying to deserialize value into an enum, don't fail on unknown value, use null instead
        configure(DeserializationFeature.READ_UNKNOWN_ENUM_VALUES_AS_NULL, true);
        
        // Serialization
        
        // Don't include properties with null value in JSON output
        setSerializationInclusion(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL); 
        // Use default pretty printer
        configure(SerializationFeature.INDENT_OUTPUT, true); 
    }

}