Unrecognized property with Jackson @JsonCreator

I am trying to use Jackson to convert some JSON to an instance of a class that contains some simple strings and another class that I am using for @JsonCreator. It seems that Jackson cannot instantiate another class.

The problem is when I run this code as part of a test:

ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
Player player = mapper.readValue(json.toString(), Player.class);

      

        
        
        
      

    

I am getting the following exception:

com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.exc.UnrecognizedPropertyException: Unrecognized field "characterClass" (class xxx.xxx.Player), not marked as ignorable (2 known properties: "name", "character"])

      

        
        
        
      

    

JSON I'm trying to parse my simple test, looks like this:

{
    "name": "joe",
    "characterClass": "warrior",
    "difficulty": "easy",
    "timesDied": 2
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

I have a 'Player' class that looks a bit like this

public class Player {

    @JsonProperty("name")
    private String playerName;

    @JsonProperty // <-- This is probably wrong
    private Character character;

    // Some getters and setters for those two fields and more
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

And one more class "Symbol", which looks like this:

public class Character{
    private PlayerClass playerClass;
    private Difficulty difficulty;
    private int timesDied;

    @JsonCreator
    public Character(@JsonProperty("characterClass") String playerClass,
                       @JsonProperty("difficulty") String diff,
                       @JsonProperty("timesDied") int died) {

        // Validation and conversion to enums

        this.playerClass = PlayerClass.WARRIOR;
        this.difficulty = Difficulty.EASY;
        this.timesDied = died;
    }

    // Again, lots of getters, setters, and other stuff
}

      

        
        
        
      

    

For small datasets like this, there would be better ways to structure the whole thing, but I think it works for example purposes. My real code is more complicated, but I wanted to make a simple example.

I think I messed up Jackson's annotations, but I'm not sure what I did wrong.