In last Jackson example, we show you how to convert user define object to / from JSON data. This time, we are doing the same, but replace user define object with Map
.
Map
is more suitable in a simple and short JSON processing, for complex JSON structure, you should always create an user defined object for easy maintainability.
In this tutorial, we show you how to use Map
to construct the JSON data, write it to file. And also how to read JSON from file, and display each value via Map
.
Jackson example to use Map
to construct the entire JSON data structure, then write it to file named “user.json“.
import java.io.File; import java.io.IOException; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.HashMap; import java.util.List; import java.util.Map; import org.codehaus.jackson.JsonGenerationException; import org.codehaus.jackson.map.JsonMappingException; import org.codehaus.jackson.map.ObjectMapper; public class JacksonExample { public static void main(String[] args) { ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper(); Map<String, Object> userInMap = new HashMap<String, Object>(); userInMap.put("name", "mkyong"); userInMap.put("age", 29); List<Object> list = new ArrayList<Object>(); list.add("msg 1"); list.add("msg 2"); list.add("msg 3"); userInMap.put("messages", list); try { // write JSON to a file mapper.writeValue(new File("c:\\user.json"), userInMap); } catch (JsonGenerationException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } catch (JsonMappingException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } }
Output – user.json”
{ "age":29, "name":"mkyong", "messages":["msg 1","msg 2","msg 3"] }
Read JSON data from file, convert it to Map
and display the values.
import java.io.File; import java.io.IOException; import java.util.ArrayList; import java.util.Map; import org.codehaus.jackson.JsonGenerationException; import org.codehaus.jackson.map.JsonMappingException; import org.codehaus.jackson.map.ObjectMapper; import org.codehaus.jackson.type.TypeReference; public class JacksonExample { public static void main(String[] args) { ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper(); try { // read JSON from a file Map<String, Object> userInMap = mapper.readValue( new File("c:\\user.json"), new TypeReference<Map<String, Object>>() {}); System.out.println(userInMap.get("name")); System.out.println(userInMap.get("age")); ArrayList<String> list = (ArrayList<String>) userInMap.get("messages"); for (String msg : list) { System.out.println(msg); } } catch (JsonGenerationException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } catch (JsonMappingException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } catch (IOException e) { e.printStackTrace(); } } }
Output
mkyong 29 msg 1 msg 2 msg 3