SerialName

Overrides the name of a class or a property in the corresponding SerialDescriptor. Names and serial names are used by text-based serial formats in order to encode the name of the class or the name of the property, e.g. by Json.

By default, SerialDescriptor.serialName and SerialDescriptor.getElementName are associated with fully-qualified name of the target class and the name of the property respectively. Applying this annotation changes the visible name to the given value:

package foo

@Serializable // RegularName.serializer().descriptor.serialName is "foo.RegularName"
class RegularName(val myInt: Int)

@Serializable
@SerialName("CustomName") // Omit package from name that is used for diagnostic and polymorphism
class CustomName(@SerialName("int") val myInt: Int)

// Prints "{"myInt":42}"
println(Json.encodeToString(RegularName(42)))
// Prints "{"int":42}"
println(Json.encodeToString(CustomName(42)))

If a name of class or property is overridden with this annotation, original source code name is not available for the library. Tools like JsonNamingStrategy and ProtoBufSchemaGenerator would see and transform value from SerialName annotation.