JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight, text-based, language-independent data exchange format that is easy for humans and machines to read and write. JSON can represent two structured types: objects and arrays. An object is an unordered collection of zero or more name/value pairs. An array is an ordered sequence of zero or more values. The values can be strings, numbers, booleans, null, and these two structured types.
Below is a simple example from Wikipedia that shows JSON representation of an object that describes a person. The object has string values for first name and last name, a number value for age, an object value representing the person’s address, and an array value of phone number objects.
{ "firstName": "John", "lastName": "Smith", "age": 25, "address": { "streetAddress": "21 2nd Street", "city": "New York", "state": "NY", "postalCode": 10021 }, "phoneNumbers": [ { "type": "home", "number": "212 555-1234" }, { "type": "fax", "number": "646 555-4567" } ] }
JSON Processing in Java : The Java API for JSON Processing JSON.simple is a simple Java library that allow parse, generate, transform, and query JSON.
Getting Started : You need to download the json-simple-1.1 jar and put it in your CLASSPATH before compiling and running the below example codes.
- For importing jar in IDE like eclipse, refer here.
- If you are using maven you may use the following maven link https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/com.googlecode.json-simple/json-simple/1.1.1
Json-Simple API : It provides object models for JSON object and array structures. These JSON structures are represented as object models using types JSONObject and JSONArray. JSONObject provides a Map view to access the unordered collection of zero or more name/value pairs from the model. Similarly, JSONArray provides a List view to access the ordered sequence of zero or more values from the model.
Write JSON to a file
Let us see an example that writes above JSON data into a file “JSONExample.json”, with help of JSONObject and JSONArray.
filter_none
edit
play_arrow
brightness_4
|
Output from file “JSONExample.json” :
{ "lastName":"Smith", "address":{ "streetAddress":"21 2nd Street", "city":"New York", "state":"NY", "postalCode":10021 }, "age":25, "phoneNumbers":[ { "type":"home", "number":"212 555-1234" }, { "type":"fax", "number":"212 555-1234" } ], "firstName":"John" }
Note : In JSON, An object is an unordered set of name/value pairs, so JSONObject doesn’t preserve the order of an object’s name/value pairs, since it is (by definition) not significant. Hence in our output file, order is not preserved.
Read JSON from a file
Let us see an example that read JSON data from above created file “JSONExample.json” with help of JSONParser, JSONObject and JSONArray.
filter_none
edit
play_arrow
brightness_4
|
Output:
John Smith 25 streetAddress : 21 2nd Street postalCode : 10021 state : NY city : New York number : 212 555-1234 type : home number : 212 555-1234 type : fax
This article is contributed by Gaurav Miglani. If you like GeeksforGeeks and would like to contribute, you can also write an article using contribute.geeksforgeeks.org or mail your article to contribute@geeksforgeeks.org. See your article appearing on the GeeksforGeeks main page and help other Geeks.
Please write comments if you find anything incorrect, or you want to share more information about the topic discussed above.
Attention reader! Don’t stop learning now. Get hold of all the important Java Foundation and Collections concepts with the Fundamentals of Java and Java Collections Course at a student-friendly price and become industry ready.