Simple way to 'flatten' ?

[normanm-algonquin]

I have an Employee class that produces the following JSON:

{
  "audit": {
    "createdDate": "2019-03-17T21:07:57.019",
    "updatedDate": "2019-03-17T21:07:57.019"
  },
  "id": 1,
  "version": 1,
  "firstName": "Mike",
  "lastName": "Norman",
  "salary": 5000
}

The audit element is from the JPA Embeddable class Audit which contains timestamp info for when the object is created and updated in the database

@Embeddable
public class Audit {
    protected LocalDateTime createdDate;
    protected LocalDateTime updatedDate;
    public Audit() {
    }
    @Column(name = "CREATED_DATE")
    public LocalDateTime getCreatedDate() {
        return createdDate;
    }
    public void setCreatedDate(LocalDateTime createdDate) {
        this.createdDate = createdDate;
    }
    @Column(name = "UPDATED_DATE")
    public LocalDateTime getUpdatedDate() {
        return updatedDate;
    }
    public void setUpdatedDate(LocalDateTime updatedDate) {
        this.updatedDate = updatedDate;
    }
}

I would like to 'flatten' the audit portion of the JSON:

{
  "createdDate": "2019-03-17T21:07:57.019",
  "updatedDate": "2019-03-17T21:07:57.019"
  "id": 1,
  "version": 1,
  "firstName": "Mike",
  "lastName": "Norman",
  "salary": 5000
}

I have started down the road of JsonbSerializer but things are getting pretty complicated pretty quick. Is there a simpler way to accomplish this? I know that Jackson had the @JsonUnwrapped annotation which seems wonderful right now ;-)

[bravehorsie]

A JsonbAdapter<Employee, Map<String,Object>> should be easier to implement than a JsonbSerializer, but there is currently no automated way to unwrap nested values based on annotation/configuration.