Simple Jackson deserialization of nested objects

Question

This should be trivial but for some reason I can't seem to get it right.

I have the following JSON response

{
  "info": "processing",
  "data": {
    "id": "123",
    "cars": [
      {
        "id": "1"
      },
      {
        "id": "2"
      }
    ]
  }
}

I've tried converting it with simple POJO's

@JsonRootName(value = "data")
public class Product {

    String id;

    List<Car> cars;

}

And

public class Car {

    String id;

}

But that returns an empty Product object with the id and products null. Surely I don't need to write a custom JsonDeserialize for this simple action?

Answer 1

You have to create the POJO and then use the Jackson ObjectMapper API to read the JSON string to java object.

Here is the working code basing on your sample string.

@JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL)
@JsonPropertyOrder({ "info", "data" })
public class Process {

    @JsonProperty("info")
    private String info;
    @JsonProperty("data")
    private Data data;
    @JsonIgnore
    private Map<String, Object> additionalProperties = new HashMap<String, Object>();

    @JsonProperty("info")
    public String getInfo() {
        return info;
    }

    @JsonProperty("info")
    public void setInfo(String info) {
        this.info = info;
    }

    @JsonProperty("data")
    public Data getData() {
        return data;
    }

    @JsonProperty("data")
    public void setData(Data data) {
        this.data = data;
    }

    @JsonAnyGetter
    public Map<String, Object> getAdditionalProperties() {
        return this.additionalProperties;
    }

    @JsonAnySetter
    public void setAdditionalProperty(String name, Object value) {
        this.additionalProperties.put(name, value);
    }

}

@JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL)
@JsonPropertyOrder({ "id", "cars" })
public class Data {

    @JsonProperty("id")
    private String id;
    @JsonProperty("cars")
    private List<Car> cars = null;
    @JsonIgnore
    private Map<String, Object> additionalProperties = new HashMap<String, Object>();

    @JsonProperty("id")
    public String getId() {
        return id;
    }

    @JsonProperty("id")
    public void setId(String id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

    @JsonProperty("cars")
    public List<Car> getCars() {
        return cars;
    }

    @JsonProperty("cars")
    public void setCars(List<Car> cars) {
        this.cars = cars;
    }

    @JsonAnyGetter
    public Map<String, Object> getAdditionalProperties() {
        return this.additionalProperties;
    }

    @JsonAnySetter
    public void setAdditionalProperty(String name, Object value) {
        this.additionalProperties.put(name, value);
    }

}


@JsonInclude(JsonInclude.Include.NON_NULL)
@JsonPropertyOrder({ "id" })
public class Car {

    @JsonProperty("id")
    private String id;
    @JsonIgnore
    private Map<String, Object> additionalProperties = new HashMap<String, Object>();

    @JsonProperty("id")
    public String getId() {
        return id;
    }

    @JsonProperty("id")
    public void setId(String id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

    @JsonAnyGetter
    public Map<String, Object> getAdditionalProperties() {
        return this.additionalProperties;
    }

    @JsonAnySetter
    public void setAdditionalProperty(String name, Object value) {
        this.additionalProperties.put(name, value);
    }

}

Code to deserialize the JSON string.

import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.List;

import com.fasterxml.jackson.core.JsonParseException;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.JsonMappingException;
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;

public class MainApp {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws JsonParseException, JsonMappingException, IOException {

        String input = "{\r\n" + 
                "  \"info\": \"processing\",\r\n" + 
                "  \"data\": {\r\n" + 
                "    \"id\": \"123\",\r\n" + 
                "    \"cars\": [\r\n" + 
                "      {\r\n" + 
                "        \"id\": \"1\"\r\n" + 
                "      },\r\n" + 
                "      {\r\n" + 
                "        \"id\": \"2\"\r\n" + 
                "      }\r\n" + 
                "    ]\r\n" + 
                "  }\r\n" + 
                "}";
        ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
        Process process = mapper.readValue(input, Process.class);
        System.out.println(process.getInfo());
        Data data = process.getData();
        List<Car> cars = data.getCars();
        for(Car car : cars) {
            System.out.println(car.getId());
        }

    }

}

Hope this helps.