Convert JSON to Map

Question

What is the best way to convert a JSON code as this:

{ 
    \"data\" : 
    { 
        \"field1\" : \"value1\", 
        \"field2\" : \"value2\"
    }
}


        

Answer 1

import net.sf.json.JSONObject

JSONObject.fromObject(yourJsonString).toMap

Answer 2

java.lang.reflect.Type mapType = new TypeToken<Map<String, Object>>(){}.getType();
Gson gson = new Gson();
Map<String, Object> categoryicons = gson.fromJson(json, mapType );

Answer 3

If you're using org.json, JSONObject has a method toMap(). You can easily do:

Map<String, Object> myMap = myJsonObject.toMap();

Answer 4

If you need pure Java without any dependencies, you can use build in Nashorn API from Java 8. It is deprecated in Java 11.

This is working for me:

...
import javax.script.ScriptEngine;
import javax.script.ScriptEngineManager;
import javax.script.ScriptException;
...

public class JsonUtils {

    public static Map parseJSON(String json) throws ScriptException {
        ScriptEngineManager sem = new ScriptEngineManager();
        ScriptEngine engine = sem.getEngineByName("javascript");

        String script = "Java.asJSONCompatible(" + json + ")";

        Object result = engine.eval(script);

        return (Map) result;
    }
}

Sample usage

JSON:

{
    "data":[
        {"id":1,"username":"bruce"},
        {"id":2,"username":"clark"},
        {"id":3,"username":"diana"}
    ]
}

Code:

...
import jdk.nashorn.internal.runtime.JSONListAdapter;
...

public static List<String> getUsernamesFromJson(Map json) {
    List<String> result = new LinkedList<>();

    JSONListAdapter data = (JSONListAdapter) json.get("data");

    for(Object obj : data) {
        Map map = (Map) obj;
        result.add((String) map.get("username"));
    }

    return result;
}

Answer 5

My post could be helpful for others, so imagine you have a map with a specific object in values, something like that:

{  
   "shopping_list":{  
      "996386":{  
         "id":996386,
         "label":"My 1st shopping list",
         "current":true,
         "nb_reference":6
      },
      "888540":{  
         "id":888540,
         "label":"My 2nd shopping list",
         "current":false,
         "nb_reference":2
      }
   }
}

To parse this JSON file with GSON library, it's easy : if your project is mavenized

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.google.code.gson</groupId>
    <artifactId>gson</artifactId>
    <version>2.3.1</version>
</dependency>

Then use this snippet :

import com.google.gson.Gson;
import com.google.gson.JsonElement;
import com.google.gson.JsonObject;
import com.google.gson.JsonParser;

//Read the JSON file
JsonElement root = new JsonParser().parse(new FileReader("/path/to/the/json/file/in/your/file/system.json"));

//Get the content of the first map
JsonObject object = root.getAsJsonObject().get("shopping_list").getAsJsonObject();

//Iterate over this map
Gson gson = new Gson();
for (Entry<String, JsonElement> entry : object.entrySet()) {
    ShoppingList shoppingList = gson.fromJson(entry.getValue(), ShoppingList.class);
    System.out.println(shoppingList.getLabel());
}

The corresponding POJO should be something like that :

public class ShoppingList {

    int id;

    String label;

    boolean current;

    int nb_reference;

    //Setters & Getters !!!!!
}

Hope it helps !

Answer 6

With google's Gson 2.7 (probably earlier versions too, but I tested 2.7) it's as simple as:

Map map = gson.fromJson(json, Map.class);

Which returns a Map of type class com.google.gson.internal.LinkedTreeMap and works recursively on nested objects.