How to parse JSON in Java

Question

I have the following JSON text. How can I parse it to get pageName, pagePic, post_id, etc.?

{
   "pageInfo": {
         "pageName": "abc",
         "pagePic": "http://example.com/content.jpg"
    }
    "posts": [
         {
              "post_id": "123456789012_123456789012",
              "actor_id": "1234567890",
              "picOfPersonWhoPosted": "http://example.com/photo.jpg",
              "nameOfPersonWhoPosted": "Jane Doe",
              "message": "Sounds cool. Can't wait to see it!",
              "likesCount": "2",
              "comments": [],
              "timeOfPost": "1234567890"
         }
    ]
}

Answer 1

For the sake of the example lets assume you have a class Person with just a name.

private class Person {
    public String name;

    public Person(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }
}

Google GSON (Maven)

My personal favourite as to the great JSON serialisation / de-serialisation of objects.

Gson g = new Gson();

Person person = g.fromJson("{\"name\": \"John\"}", Person.class);
System.out.println(person.name); //John

System.out.println(g.toJson(person)); // {"name":"John"}

Update

If you want to get a single attribute out you can do it easily with the Google library as well:

JsonObject jsonObject = new JsonParser().parse("{\"name\": \"John\"}").getAsJsonObject();

System.out.println(jsonObject.get("name").getAsString()); //John

Org.JSON (Maven)

If you don't need object de-serialisation but to simply get an attribute, you can try org.json (or look GSON example above!)

JSONObject obj = new JSONObject("{\"name\": \"John\"}");

System.out.println(obj.getString("name")); //John

Jackson (Maven)

ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
Person user = mapper.readValue("{\"name\": \"John\"}", Person.class);

System.out.println(user.name); //John

Answer 2

We can use the JSONObject class to convert a JSON string to a JSON object and to iterate over the JSON object. Use the following code.

JSONObject jObj = new JSONObject(contents.trim());
Iterator<?> keys = jObj.keys();

while( keys.hasNext() ) {
  String key2 = (String)keys.next();
  if ( jObj.get(key2) instanceof JSONObject ) {           
    System.out.println(jObj.getString(String key));
  }
}

Answer 3

import org.json.*;


JSONObject obj = new JSONObject(" .... ");
String pageName = obj.getJSONObject("pageInfo").getString("pageName");

JSONArray arr = obj.getJSONArray("posts");
for (int i = 0; i < arr.length(); i++)
{
    String post_id = arr.getJSONObject(i).getString("post_id");
    ......
}