Develop Reference

use reflection to set or get array in a Java Map

Is there a way to get or set an array element stored in a Java Map?
Example:
If we have a map like this:
{
name: "Blah",
friends: ["Foo", "Bar"]
}
Map<String, Object> myMap = new HashMap<>();
List<String> friends = new ArrayList<>();
myMap.put("name", "Blah");
myMap.put("friends", friends);
Is it possible to use Reflection to get or set the first element in the friends array in the "myMap" from the string: "myMap.friends[0]"

Your question is not very clearly written and I believe that's why you are not getting the answer you expect but, If I understood your question correctly, you need to parse the following input string at runtime that you don't know beforehand:
myMap.friends[0]
And this should be parsed into components like:
mapName = "myMap"
mapKey = "friends"
valueIndex = 0
And with this information, you need to manipulate data in a Map at runtime through reflection.
Note: This only makes sense if you could potentially have more complex expressions, using different sort of objects and accessing nested properties of retrieved objects, otherwise you wouldn't need reflection at all.
Note 2: You may want to have a look at JXPath which already does a lot of this for you based on a XPath-like syntax for navigating object graphs.
That said, if my assumptions are correct and you still want to do it yourself, consider the following example.
For the sake of demonstration, let's consider our map is returned by a method myMap inside a Context.
private static class Context {
public Map<String, Object> myMap() {
Map<String, Object> myMap = new HashMap<>();
List<String> friends = new ArrayList<>();
friends.add("Foo");
friends.add("Bar");
myMap.put("name", "Blah");
myMap.put("friends", friends);
return myMap;
}
}
I'm assuming you are already parsing the input string into the different components. If not, for this simple string you could do it with simple regular expressions. If you already have the components, let's consider the following method:
public static Object readContextMap(Context context,
String mapName, String mapKey, Integer mapValueIndex) throws Exception {
// gets Context class for inspection
Class<?> cls = context.getClass();
// search for a method based on supplied mapName
Method mapMethod = cls.getDeclaredMethod(mapName);
// get a value from the retrieved map based on mapKey
Object mapValue = mapMethod.getReturnType()
.getDeclaredMethod("get", Object.class)
.invoke(mapMethod.invoke(context), mapKey);
// if the result is of type list, use the index to return the indexed element
if (List.class.isAssignableFrom(mapValue.getClass())) {
return ((List<?>)mapValue).get(mapValueIndex);
}
// otherwise return the object itself
return mapValue;
}
For testing purposes, consider the following main method:
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
Context context = new Context();
String input = "myMap.friends[0]";
// parse input into...
String mapName = "myMap";
String mapKey = "friends";
Integer valueIndex = 0;
Object firstFriend = readContextMap(context, mapName, mapKey, valueIndex);
System.out.println(firstFriend);
// prints Foo
Object name = readContextMap(context, "myMap", "name", null);
System.out.println(name);
// prints Blah
}
This should be approximately what you want. You can easily create variations of this to set values as well. Please bear in mind that this code is just for demo purposes and needs a better error handling (e.g. verify if the context is really returning a map and nothing else).
This should be something along the lines you are looking for.

There's no need to use reflection here. You can simply cast it (which is also unsafe, but less so).
You can just do this:
List<String> friends = (List<String>) myMap.get("friends");
friends.set(0, "Bob");

Gson: how to include partly serialized object?

Given the class:
class Container<T> {
T item;
String type;
Map<String,String> properties;
public void setItem(T _item) {
item = _item;
}
}
I have already the item serialized in a database as string with the name serialized. It is a Map<String,String>.
I don't know how to say Gson that this variable is already serialized.
So when I use Gson I first deserialize it, then serialize it back
Container<Map <String, String>> t = new Container<>(<other parameters>);
Map <String, String> m = gson.fromJson(serialized, new TypeToken<Map<String,String>>(){}.getType())
t.setItem(m);
gson.toJson(t, new TypeToken<Container<Map<String,String>>>() {}.getType());
This feels inefficient. How do I fix this?

I'm not sure that's possible. You're mixing object creation and serialization.
What you can do is create a new constructor with an additional String parameter and deserialize the string to get your item and set it automatically. That should be possible even with a parameterized type. That way you have 2 lines of code instead of 4.

What is the reasoning on modelling a class to represent JSON data and do I need to?

I have come across this question on StackOverflow which asks about converting JSON to Java. The answer shows that another class is modelled to represent the JSON data as well as an object being created and I don't understand why.
Does that object now contain all the information after Gson reads the content or only one key/value pair? If it only contains 1 key/value pair, I'm assuming I would need to create multiple objects for the JSON that I have below which I can the use a loop to iterate over and add the values to a drop down menu?
{
"1": "Annie",
"2": "Olaf",
"3": "Galio",
"4": "TwistedFate",
"5": "XinZhao",
"6": "Urgot",
"7": "Leblanc",
"8": "Vladimir",
"9": "FiddleSticks",
"10": "Kayle",
"11": "MasterYi",
"12": "Alistar",
"13": "Ryze",
"14": "Sion",
"15": "Sivir",
"16": "Soraka",
"17": "Teemo",
"18": "Tristana",
"19": "Warwick",
"20": "Nunu"
}
Essentially what I am aiming to do is:
1) Create a list of names with the Values.
2) Sort the list of names (as it comes unsorted) in alphabetical order
3) Loop through the list and add each name to a drop down menu
4) When a name in the drop down menu is selected, the key associated with that value is passed to another url which receives more data.
Sorry if this is unclear. I've spent a couple of hours trying to understand how to get elements from JSON and display it, as well as trying to create a list where I can use the key to display information the name but have had no luck except for using a for-each loop.

Let's use Jackson's feature that allows you to map any property to a single method (you don't really need a getter here I believe). Just swap the key and value in this universal setter, and add to a TreeMap, which is already sorted by key (name). Then you can output the keys (names) in the alphabetical order and get an ID by name easily.
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
String json = "....."; // your JSON string here
com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper mapper =
new com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper();
ReverseMap pairs = mapper.readValue(json, ReverseMap.class);
for (Map.Entry<Object, String> entry : pairs.getValues().entrySet()) {
System.out.println(entry.getKey() + ":" + entry.getValue());
}
}
public class ReverseMap {
private TreeMap<Object, String> mapping = new TreeMap<>();
#com.fasterxml.jackson.annotation.JsonAnySetter
public void add(String name, Object value) {
mapping.put(value, name);
}
public Map<Object, String> getValues() {
return mapping;
}
}

Gson Bean Mapping Solution
Okay, what you have is a bit unusual for a JSON object; the keys (the numbers in your case) essentially represent properties of their contained object. That's workable, but you have to understand that, for example, when looking for "Annie" in the JSON object, if you use Gson to map to a "bean" class, which we'll call Data (as in the linked example), then you'd have to create a data object like so:
class Data {
private String _1;
// ...
private String _20;
public String get1() { return _1; }
public void set1(String _1) { this._1 = _1; }
// ...
public String get20() { return _20; }
public void set20(String _20) { this._20 = _20; }
}
And by using Data data = new Gson().fromJson(myJsonString, Data.class); on the given string, you'd be able to find "Annie" by calling... uh... data.get1()?
Clearly, this isn't a good solution.
Better Solutions
Since your data doesn't follow the typical format for a JSON object, you have two options:
If you can, refactor your JSON representation to a more verbose, but better representation for parsing.
Use a different approach to parse the existing JSON.
Solution 1: Changing the JSON representation
Refactoring the JSON would result in an object that (preferably) would look like this:
{
"champions" : [
{
"index" : 1,
"name" : "Annie"
},
{
"index" : 2,
"name" : "Olaf"
},
// ...
]
}
This could map easily to a couple of beans that look like this:
class Data {
private List<Champion> champions;
// TODO getters and setters
}
class Champion {
private int index;
private String name;
// TODO getters and setters
}
However, this adds a lot of unnecessary clutter to the JSON object, and isn't really necessary with only two fields per champion (the name, and their index).
You could simplify that further like so:
{
"champions" : [
"Annie",
"Olaf",
// ...
]
}
The bean class for that would then be:
class Data {
private List<String> champions;
// TODO getters and setters
}
Much simpler, but still requires a change to the JSON you're getting, which in some situations isn't possible. If you used this, though, you could also get rid of the "bean" class entirely, via:
List<String> champions = (List<String>) new Gson().fromJson(myJsonString, new TypeToken<List<String>>(){}.getType());
Solution 2: Changing how the JSON is parsed
The arguably better and cleaner solution is just to change how the JSON is parsed.
The goal here (if I understand you correctly) is to parse the JSON and spit out a collection of strings representing each champion's name, accessible by the numeric index of the champion in the JSON representation.
As such, and because of the way the JSON object is laid out as a simple mapping of strings to strings, we can use Gson to pipe directly into a Map<String, Object>, like so:
Map<String, String> mappedValues = new Gson().fromJson(myJsonString, Map.class);
String anniesName = mappedValues.get("1"); // "Annie"
String olafsName = mappedValues.get("2"); // "Olaf"
boolean hasTwentyOneElements = mappedValues.containsKey("21"); // false
This is shorter, requires no "bean" classes, and keeps the original JSON representation. The downside is that you can't easily tell whether the indices of each entry are correct and consistent; ie. if someone types in the wrong number, or deletes one of the entries.
To get a container of all keys, you just use mappedValues.keySet(), and to get a container of all key-value pairs, you use mappedValues.entrySet(), which gives you a Set<Map.Entry<String, String>>. Both of those can be iterated over, and may be in random order (I'm not sure whether the underlying Map implementation preserves insertion order or not).
To get the index for a given name (ie. champ), you'd use something similar to the following:
String index = null;
for (Map.Entry<String, String> entry : mappedValues.entrySet()) {
if (champ.equals(entry.getValue())) {
index = entry.getKey();
break;
}
}
Of course, you'd have to check to see if index is null after this, and handle that appropriately, but it's easily doable.
EDIT: #vempo's answer provides a cleaner, more efficient lookup strategy by means of inverting the map (although the answer is written for Jackson, instead of Gson); an adaptation of this for Gson is as follows (and yes, there is a vastly superior version in java-8, left out for sake of availability):
public Map<String, String> invertMap(Map<String, String> input) {
Map<String, String> newMap = new LinkedTreeMap<String, String>(); // TODO Pick optimal storage class
for (Map.Entry<String, String> entry : input.entrySet()) {
newMap.put(entry.getValue(), entry.getKey());
}
return newMap;
}
// ...
Map<String, String> mappedValues = invertMap(new Gson().fromJson(myJsonString, Map.class));
String annieIndex = mappedValues.get("Annie"); // "1"
String olafIndex = mappedValues.get("Olaf"); // "2"
It's worth noting that this sacrifices efficiency of constructing the map by effectively building it twice (once by Gson and once more to invert), but it makes value lookup much more efficient.

Using group-by type of operation on JSON objects

I have JSON data in the following format.
[{
"id": 16966,
"post": "This is about road!",
"category": "road",
},
.
.
.]
I want to group JSON entries according to their categories. So, I will get all road related entries in one datastructure, (say list). I know that I can put the data into Mongo DB or even a relational database and do querying. Without doing that, is there some easy method to do this?

If you gonna read the entire JSON file, an easy way is to first read all the entries into a List<Data> and then group them in a Map<String, List<Data>>.
class Data {
private int id;
private String post;
private String category;
//getter, equals, hashcode, toString, etc.
}
and then:
public class Test {
public static void main(String args[] ) throws Exception {
Gson gson = new Gson();
List<Data> list = gson.fromJson(new BufferedReader(new FileReader("myJson.json")), new TypeToken<List<Data>>(){}.getType());
Map<String, List<Data>> groupedMap = list.stream().collect(Collectors.groupingBy(Data::getCategory));
groupedMap.forEach((k, v) -> System.out.println(k + " => " + v));
}
}
which outputs:
road => [Data [id=16966, post=This is about road!, category=road], Data [id=16965, post=This is about road!, category=road]]
land => [Data [id=16961, post=This is about land!, category=land]]
I added some entries to the file. I guess you could write your own deserializer too to get rid of the step when you have a temporary list and store directly in the map, but you asked for an easy way :-). Also note that I'm using java-8 and Gson, but you can also achieve this without it (but you'll write more code).

Take a look on JXPath. This library allows running XPath queries on collections of java objects. So, you can map JSON to your java model using one of popular JSON parser (e.g. Jackson or Gson) and then JXPath to run XPath queries on your collection.
For more information refer here: http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-jxpath/

Deserialize JSON object that has a map using Gson

I've searched the web for a solution, but, the answers I found only help when the JSON file being parsed is solely a map.
I was wondering if there is a way to parse an object that has an HashMap along with other data.
For example:
public class Data
{
String aName;
HashMap<String, Object> objects;
List<String> aExpressions;
}
I can parse the name and expressions but I don't know how to parse the entire JSON object as a whole.
I think it has something to do with type tokens, but that only works if the whole object is a HashMap.

The presence of HashMap in your class does not change how Gson converts it to and from json.
data d = new data();
//set some values
String json = new Gson().toJson(d);
data d2 = new Gson().fromJson( json, data.class);
That's pretty much it.

Since
JSON can represent four primitive types (strings, numbers,
booleans, and null) and two structured types (objects and arrays).
A string is a sequence of zero or more Unicode characters
[UNICODE].
An object is an unordered collection of zero or more name/value
pairs, where a name is a string and a value is a string, number,
boolean, null, object, or array.
An array is an ordered sequence of zero or more values.
Gson acts 2 ways:
you can let Gson deserialize creating a combination of maps, lists and primitives or
you can specify exactly the kind of object you want, and through reflection, it will fill the desidered fields.
You can mix these two approaches and of course you can do a lot more to solve all your parsing cases (like using custom type adapters).
I prepared you a little example using your class that shows how Gson can parse your data using a combination of maps/list/primitives or passing your class (that has a mixed approach).
package stackoverflow.questions;
import java.util.*;
import com.google.gson.Gson;
public class Q20154323 {
public static class Data {
public String aName;
public HashMap<String, Object> objects;
public List<String> aExpressions;
#Override
public String toString() {
return "Data [aName=" + aName + ", objects=" + objects + ", aExpressions=" + aExpressions + "]";
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
Data d = new Data();
d.aName = "Test";
d.objects = new HashMap<>();
d.aExpressions = new ArrayList<>();
d.objects.put("key1", 1L);
d.objects.put("key2", new Date());
d.aExpressions.add("Stack");
d.aExpressions.add("Overflow");
Gson g = new Gson();
String json = g.toJson(d);
System.out.println("As JSON: " +json);
Data d2 = g.fromJson(json, Data.class);
System.out.println("As \"casted\" data type: " + d2);
Object o3 = g.fromJson(json, Object.class);
System.out.println("As \"free\" object: " + o3);
}
}
and this is the execution. It shows you two way of parsing the JSON string that I created using your initial class.
As JSON: {"aName":"Test","objects":{"key2":"Nov 23, 2013 1:33:23 AM","key1":1},"aExpressions":["Stack","Overflow"]}
As "casted" data type: Data [aName=Test, objects={key2=Nov 23, 2013 1:33:23 AM, key1=1.0}, aExpressions=[Stack, Overflow]]
As "free" object: {aName=Test, objects={key2=Nov 23, 2013 1:33:23 AM, key1=1.0}, aExpressions=[Stack, Overflow]}
You can use one or other approach as your needs.
About the TypeToken, due to generics erasure, something like this
List<Data> list = new Gson().parse(aJsonString, List<Data>.class)
won't work, you have to do something like
Type listType = new TypeToken<List<Data>>() {}.getType();
List<Data> list = new Gson().parse(aJsonString, listType.class)
but this case applies, pratically, when your JSON is an array and you want to deserialize it into a list of custom classes.