How to convert hashmap to JSON object in Java

Question

How to convert or cast hashmap to JSON object in Java, and again convert JSON object to JSON string?

Answer 1

Example using json

Map<String, Object> data = new HashMap<String, Object>();
    data.put( "name", "Mars" );
    data.put( "age", 32 );
    data.put( "city", "NY" );
    JSONObject json = new JSONObject();
    json.putAll( data );
    System.out.printf( "JSON: %s", json.toString(2) );

output::

JSON: {
  "age": 32,
  "name": "Mars",
  "city": "NY"
}

You can also try to use Google's GSON.Google's GSON is the best library available to convert Java Objects into their JSON representation.

http://code.google.com/p/google-gson/

Answer 2

If you are using JSR 374: Java API for JSON Processing ( javax json ) This seems to do the trick:

    JsonObjectBuilder job = Json.createObjectBuilder((Map<String, Object>) obj);
    JsonObject jsonObject = job.build();

Answer 3

No need for Gson or JSON parsing libraries. Just using new JSONObject(Map<String, JSONObject>).toString(), e.g:

/**
 * convert target map to JSON string
 *
 * @param map the target map
 * @return JSON string of the map
 */
@NonNull public String toJson(@NonNull Map<String, Target> map) {
    final Map<String, JSONObject> flatMap = new HashMap<>();
    for (String key : map.keySet()) {
        try {
            flatMap.put(key, toJsonObject(map.get(key)));
        } catch (JSONException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
    try {
        // 2 indentSpaces for pretty printing
        return new JSONObject(flatMap).toString(2);
    } catch (JSONException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
        return "{}";
    }
}

Answer 4

You can convert Map to JSON using Jackson as follows:

Map<String,Object> map = new HashMap<>();
//You can convert any Object.
String[] value1 = new String[] { "value11", "value12", "value13" };
String[] value2 = new String[] { "value21", "value22", "value23" };
map.put("key1", value1);
map.put("key2", value2);
map.put("key3","string1");
map.put("key4","string2");

String json = new ObjectMapper().writeValueAsString(map);
System.out.println(json);

Maven Dependencies for Jackson :

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackson-core</artifactId>
    <version>2.5.3</version>
    <scope>compile</scope>
</dependency>

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackson-databind</artifactId>
    <version>2.5.3</version>
    <scope>compile</scope>
</dependency>

If you are using JSONObject library, you can convert map to JSON as follows:

Map<String, Object> map = new HashMap<>();
// Convert a map having list of values.
String[] value1 = new String[] { "value11", "value12", "value13" };
String[] value2 = new String[] { "value21", "value22", "value23" };
map.put("key1", value1);
map.put("key2", value2);

JSONObject json = new JSONObject(map);
System.out.println(json);

Maven Dependencies for JSONObject :

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.json</groupId>
    <artifactId>json</artifactId>
    <version>20140107</version>
</dependency>

Hope this will help. Happy coding.

Answer 5

Here my single-line solution with GSON:

myObject = new Gson().fromJson(new Gson().toJson(myHashMap), MyClass.class);

Answer 6

If you use complex objects, you should apply enableComplexMapKeySerialization(), as stated in https://stackoverflow.com/a/24635655/2914140 and https://stackoverflow.com/a/26374888/2914140.

Gson gson = new GsonBuilder().enableComplexMapKeySerialization().create();
Map<Point, String> original = new LinkedHashMap<Point, String>();
original.put(new Point(5, 6), "a");
original.put(new Point(8, 8), "b");
System.out.println(gson.toJson(original));

Output will be:

{
 "(5,6)": "a",
 "(8,8)": "b"
}