Would it be possible if someone could help me parse this json result. I have retrieved the result as a string
{"query":{"latitude":39.9889,"longitude":-82.8118},"timestamp":1310252291.861,"address":{"geometry":{"coordinates":[-82.81168367358264,39.9887910986731],"type":"Point"},"properties":{"address":"284 Macdougal Ln","distance":"0.02","postcode":"43004","city":"Columbus","county":"Franklin","province":"OH","country":"US"},"type":"Feature"}} Jackson. Simple and intuitive to use. For me the best available. Start out with Simple Data Binding, it will throw everything it finds in Maps and Lists.
Like this:
ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper(); Map<String,Object> yourData = mapper.readValue(new File("yourdata.json"), Map.class); That's all that's needed.
A good and quick introduction can be found here
And a full working example with your actual data:
import java.io.IOException; import java.util.Map; import org.codehaus.jackson.map.ObjectMapper; public class Main { public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException { ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper(); Map<?,?> rootAsMap = mapper.readValue( "{\"query\":{\"latitude\":39.9889,\"longitude\":-82.8118},\"timestamp\":1310252291.861,\"address\":{\"geometry\":{\"coordinates\":[-82.81168367358264,39.9887910986731],\"type\":\"Point\"},\"properties\":{\"address\":\"284 Macdougal Ln\",\"distance\":\"0.02\",\"postcode\":\"43004\",\"city\":\"Columbus\",\"county\":\"Franklin\",\"province\":\"OH\",\"country\":\"US\"},\"type\":\"Feature\"}}".getBytes(), Map.class); System.out.println(rootAsMap); Map query = (Map) rootAsMap.get("query"); Map address = (Map) rootAsMap.get("address"); Map addressProperties = (Map) address.get("properties"); String county = (String) addressProperties.get("county"); System.out.println("County is " + county); } } Now, this whole Map juggling also illustrates Bozho's point pretty well, using full binding (by creating a Java class that reflects the content of the JSON data) will work better in the end.
The two best options that I know of are:
Using them is a matter of calling one method of the mapper. But remember that since Java is statically-typed, you may have to create an object that has the required structure. (You don't have to, but it feels more natural)
From http://www.json.org, under the Java section:
Pick your poison
With Jackson, following is the approach I'd take. Since the coordinates in the JSON come in two different formats -- sometimes an object, sometimes an array -- the solution is mildly complicated with necessary custom deserialization processing.
import java.io.File; import java.io.IOException; import java.math.BigDecimal; import org.codehaus.jackson.JsonNode; import org.codehaus.jackson.JsonParser; import org.codehaus.jackson.JsonProcessingException; import org.codehaus.jackson.ObjectCodec; import org.codehaus.jackson.Version; import org.codehaus.jackson.annotate.JsonAutoDetect.Visibility; import org.codehaus.jackson.map.DeserializationContext; import org.codehaus.jackson.map.JsonDeserializer; import org.codehaus.jackson.map.ObjectMapper; import org.codehaus.jackson.map.module.SimpleModule; import org.codehaus.jackson.node.ArrayNode; public class JacksonFoo { public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception { ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper(); mapper.setVisibilityChecker(mapper.getVisibilityChecker().withFieldVisibility(Visibility.ANY)); mapper.registerModule( new SimpleModule("CoordinatesDeserializer", Version.unknownVersion()) .addDeserializer(Coordinates.class, new CoordinatesDeserializer())); Result result = mapper.readValue(new File("input.json"), Result.class); System.out.println(mapper.writeValueAsString(result)); } } class CoordinatesDeserializer extends JsonDeserializer<Coordinates> { @Override public Coordinates deserialize(JsonParser jp, DeserializationContext ctxt) throws IOException, JsonProcessingException { ObjectCodec codec = jp.getCodec(); JsonNode node = codec.readTree(jp); if (node.isObject()) { ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper(); mapper.setVisibilityChecker(mapper.getVisibilityChecker().withFieldVisibility(Visibility.ANY)); return mapper.readValue(node, Coordinates.class); } // else it's an array ArrayNode array = (ArrayNode) node; Coordinates coordinates = new Coordinates(); coordinates.latitude = codec.treeToValue(array.get(0), BigDecimal.class); coordinates.latitude = codec.treeToValue(array.get(1), BigDecimal.class); return coordinates; } } class Result { Coordinates query; BigDecimal timestamp; Address address; } class Coordinates { BigDecimal latitude; BigDecimal longitude; } class Address { String type; Geometry geometry; AddressDetails properties; } class Geometry { String type; Coordinates coordinates; } class AddressDetails { String address; BigDecimal distance; String postcode; String city; String county; String province; String country; }