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Spring/Jackson Mapping Inner JSON Objects

I have a RESTful web service that provides JSON that I am consuming. I am using Spring 3.2 and Spring's MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter. My JSON looks like this:
{
"Daives": {
"Daive": {},
"Daive": {},
"Daive": {},
"Daive": {}
}
}
Now everything I have read seems to indicate that this JSON should be refactored to an array of JSON Daives. However, this is valid JSON so I want to make sure that I am thinking correctly before going back to the service provider to ask for changes. In the format above, I would have to know ahead of time how many Daives there are going to be such that my DTO accounted for them. The handy dandy Jackson mapper isn't going work with this kind of JSON setup. If the JSON was altered to provide and Array of JSON Daives, I could use a List to dynamically map them using Spring/Jackson.
Am I correct? Thanks :)

According to this thread, the JSON spec itself does not forbid multiple fields with the same name (in your case, multiple fields named "Daive" in the object "Daives").
However, most parsers will either return an error or ignore any value but the last one. As you said, putting these values into an array seems much more sensible; and indeed, you'll be able to map this array to a List with Jackson.

Elegant mapping from POJOs to vertx.io's JsonObject?

I am currently working on a vertx.io application and wanted to use the provide mongo api for data storage. I currently have a rather clunky abstraction on top of the stock JsonObject classes where all get and set methods are replaced with things like:
this.backingObject.get(KEY_FOR_THIS_PROPERTY);
This is all well and good for now, but it won't scale particularly well. it also seems dirty, specifically when using nested arrays or objects. For example, if I want to be able to fill fields only when actual data is known, I have to check if the array exists, and if it doesn't create it and store it in the object. Then I can add an element to the list. For example:
if (this.backingObject.getJsonArray(KEY_LIST) == null) {
this.backingObject.put(KEY_LIST, new JsonArray());
}
this.backingObject.getJsonArray(KEY_LIST).add(p.getBackingObject());
I have thought about potential solutions but don't particularly like any of them. Namely, I could use Gson or some similar library with annotation support to handle loading the object for the purposes of manipulating the data in my code, and then using the serialize and unserialize function of both Gson and Vertx to convert between the formats (vertx to load data -> json string -> gson to parse json into pojos -> make changes -> serialize to json string -> parse with vertx and save) but that's a really gross and inefficient workflow. I could also probably come up with some sort of abstract wrapper that extends/implements the vertx json library but passes all the functionality through to gson, but that also seems like a lot of work.
Is there any good way to achieve more friendly and maintainable serialization using vertx?

I just submitted a patch to Vert.x that defines two new convenience functions for converting between JsonObject and Java object instances without the inefficiency of going through an intermediate JSON string representation. This will be in version 3.4.
// Create a JsonObject from the fields of a Java object.
// Faster than calling `new JsonObject(Json.encode(obj))`.
public static JsonObject mapFrom(Object obj)
// Instantiate a Java object from a JsonObject.
// Faster than calling `Json.decodeValue(Json.encode(jsonObject), type)`.
public <T> T mapTo(Class<T> type)
Internally this uses ObjectMapper#convertValue(...), see Tim Putnam's answer for caveats of this approach. The code is here.

I believe Jackson's ObjectMapper.convertValue(..) functions don't convert via String, and Vert.x is using Jackson for managing JsonObject anyway.
JsonObject just has an underlying map representing the values, accessible via JsonObject.getMap(), and a Jackson serializer/deserializer on the public ObjectMapper instance in io.vertx.core.json.Json.
To switch between JsonObject and a data model expressed in Pojos serializable with Jackson, you can do:
JsonObject myVertxMsg = ...
MyPojo pojo = Json.mapper.convertValue ( myVertxMsg.getMap(), MyPojo.class );
I would guess this is more efficient than going via a String (but its just a guess), and I hate the idea of altering the data class just to suit the environment, so it depends on the context - form vs performance.
To convert from Pojo to JsonObject, convert to a map with Jackson and then use the constructor on JsonObject:
JsonObject myobj = new JsonObject ( Json.mapper.convertValue ( pojo, Map.class ));
If you have implied nested JsonObjects or JsonArray objects in your definition, they will get instantiated as Maps and Lists by default. JsonObject will internally re-wrap these when you access fields specifying those types (e.g. with getJsonArray(..).
Because JsonObject is freeform and you're converting to a static type, you may get some unwanted UnrecognizedPropertyException to deal with. It may be useful to create your own ObjectMapper, add the vertx JsonObjectSerializer and JsonArraySerializer, and then make configuration changes to suit (such as DeserializationFeature.FAIL_ON_UNKNOWN_PROPERTIES in Jackson).

Not sure if I've understood you correctly, but it sounds like you're trying to find a simple way of converting POJOs to JsonObject?
So, we have lots of pojos that we send over the EventBus as JsonObjects
I've found the easiest way is to use the vert.x Json class which has loads of helper methods to convert to / from Json Strings
JsonObject jsonObject = new JsonObject(Json.encode(myPojo));
Sometimes you need to add some custom (de)serializers, but we always stick with Jackson - that is what Vert.x is using so they work out of the box.
What we actually do, is provide an interface like the following:
public JsonObjectSerializable {
public JsonObject toJson();
}
And all our pojos that need to be sent over the EventBus have to implement this interface.
Then our EventBus sending code looks something like (simplified):
public <T extends JsonObjectSerializable> Response<T> dispatch(T eventPayload);
Also, as we generally don't unit test Pojos, adding this interface encourages the developers to unit test their conversion.
Hope this helps,
Will

Try this:
io.vertx.core.json.Json.mapper.convertValue(json.getMap(), cls)

I think that using Gson as you described is the best possible solution at the current time.
While I agree that if a protocol layer was included in Vert.x it would indeed be first prize, using Gson keeps your server internals pretty organised and is unlikely to be the performance bottleneck.
When and only when this strategy becomes the performance bottleneck have you reached the point to engineer a better solution. Anything before that is premature optimisation.
My two cents.

You can try:
new JsonObject().mapFrom(object)

What's the fastest way to build a JSON string in java?

I'm working with JSON on the server for the first time. I'm trying to create an object that looks like this:
{
columnData : {
column1 : {"foo": "bar", "value" : 1 },
},
rowData : {
row1 : {"type" : "integer", "value" : 1},
}
}
Essentially, it's a two-level JSON object in which I've got all objects on the top level. Everything on the second level will be a string, and integer, or a float. I've found several ways I could go about creating this JSON string:
Build the string directly
I can go through one line at a time and build up a giant string. This seems unwieldy.
Use gson
I can build a map (or class?) that has the structure of the JSON I want, and then use gson to convert to a JSON string.
Use JsonObject
This would work like this question. I just found that example, and I like how simple working with JSON looks in it, but I'm not sure if it's a better way to go than the other options.
I'm pretty new with Java, so I'm not really sure what the performance tradeoffs of these methods are. I do know that I'll potentially be calling this method lots of times very quickly to load data into a client as the user scrolls a table in a webapp, so I'd like everything to be as fast as possible. What's the quickest way to go about building the JSON string that I'll then be sending back to the client?

Depends on what "fastest" means. Fast to develop or fast in terms of performance.
Fastest on dev is to use a library to serialize existing data structures directly to JSON. Use the following library.
http://flexjson.sourceforge.net
Performance wise comparisons it matches Jackson and beats in some cases and destroys gson. But that means you would be serializing your data structures directly rather than mapping them by hand with JSONObject or something like that.
You may be able to get a faster transaction / sec by using JSONObject by hand and mapping your data structures to it. You might get better performance, but then you might not because you have to new up JSONObject and convert the data to it. Then allow JSONObject to render. Can you write hand written code better than a serializing library? Maybe, maybe not.

Converter from Json into groovy CODE?

It's a kind of odd question for an odd situation. I have a large JSON structure which I would like to represent in running groovy code. I need groovy objects that mirror the same structure as the JSON objects.
As to be expected a web search mostly returns results with groovy/json runtime conversion stuff, but nothing about things that output groovy code.
You might think this lazy but really it is a massive JSON structure! A converter would save days!

You can use Groovy's own JsonSlurper to parse JSON objects:
import groovy.json.*
def json = '{"name":"john", "surname":"doe", "languages": ["groovy", "python"]}'
def obj = new JsonSlurper().parseText(json)
assert obj.name == "john"
assert obj.surname == "doe"
assert obj.languages.containsAll("python", "groovy")
Of course the class is untyped: it's only known at runtime. If you want it to be typed, you can write a code which writes the code based on an example (since a json schema may be rare).
EDIT: if you want to generate the model classes code, you can try JSONGen, which "parses JSON to create client side source files to model the JSON data structure". I'm not aware of a solution for Groovy, but since java-groovy integrations is seamless, it shall work fine.

If you want a Groovy representation of your JSON, you can get that via the built-in JsonSlurper. This will give you Java Maps and Lists of data you can work with.
You can populate more specific, custom objects you've written to represent your JSON entities using the (3rd party) Jackson's data binding functionality (see this question as well).

Try using a JSON parser like this one. According to its documentation you just need to do
JSON.parse
to deserialize the data

Parsing complex string of JSON in java

I want to parse a JSON string which is quite complex. It has somewhat following format
{ A:{ list of around 20 objects},B:1}
These objects inside A again contains some other objects or the datatypes supported by JSON. I have checked couple of examples and documentations.
I found this example to be helpful
Converting JSON to Java
but looks like I need to know each and every element of the objects contained. I can write a similar code but before spending so much effort I wanted to check if there is other libraries out there which can do automatic parsing and By just giving the key field I can get those contents.

Jackson should be able to handle the structure with no problem. You do not need to know the exact structure of the JSON. You can just iterate over all of the objects and inter-objects.