Converting json to a java object

In the earlier tutorials we saw how to convert json to a java object. In This tutorial we see how to parse json and obtain individual tokens. Although this may seem like a cumbersome way to build java object from json, however it is extremely powerful and may be a good choice if you need a very high level of control over the parsing. We use the JsonReader class to read the json as a stream of tokens. The beginning of an object or an array is also a token. Here’s a detailed example.

package com.studytrails.json.gson;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.StringReader;
import java.net.MalformedURLException;
import java.net.URL;

import org.apache.commons.io.IOUtils;

import com.google.gson.stream.JsonReader;
import com.google.gson.stream.JsonToken;

public class ParseTokenExample7
{
	public static void main(String[] args) throws MalformedURLException, IOException
	{
		String url = "http://freemusicarchive.org/api/get/albums.json?api_key=60BLHNQCAOUFPIBZ&limit=1";
		String json = IOUtils.toString(new URL(url));
		// use the reader to read the json to a stream of tokens
		JsonReader reader = new JsonReader(new StringReader(json));
		// we call the handle object method to handle the full json object. This
		// implies that the first token in JsonToken.BEGIN_OBJECT, which is
		// always true.
		handleObject(reader);
	}

	/**
	 * Handle an Object. Consume the first token which is BEGIN_OBJECT. Within
	 * the Object there could be array or non array tokens. We write handler
	 * methods for both. Noe the peek() method. It is used to find out the type
	 * of the next token without actually consuming it.
	 * 
	 * @param reader
	 * @throws IOException
	 */
	private static void handleObject(JsonReader reader) throws IOException
	{
		reader.beginObject();
		while (reader.hasNext()) {
			JsonToken token = reader.peek();
			if (token.equals(JsonToken.BEGIN_ARRAY))
				handleArray(reader);
			else if (token.equals(JsonToken.END_OBJECT)) {
				reader.endObject();
				return;
			} else
				handleNonArrayToken(reader, token);
		}

	}

	/**
	 * Handle a json array. The first token would be JsonToken.BEGIN_ARRAY.
	 * Arrays may contain objects or primitives.
	 * 
	 * @param reader
	 * @throws IOException
	 */
	public static void handleArray(JsonReader reader) throws IOException
	{
		reader.beginArray();
		while (true) {
			JsonToken token = reader.peek();
			if (token.equals(JsonToken.END_ARRAY)) {
				reader.endArray();
				break;
			} else if (token.equals(JsonToken.BEGIN_OBJECT)) {
				handleObject(reader);
			} else if (token.equals(JsonToken.END_OBJECT)) {
				reader.endObject();
			} else
				handleNonArrayToken(reader, token);
		}
	}

	/**
	 * Handle non array non object tokens
	 * 
	 * @param reader
	 * @param token
	 * @throws IOException
	 */
	public static void handleNonArrayToken(JsonReader reader, JsonToken token) throws IOException
	{
		if (token.equals(JsonToken.NAME))
			System.out.println(reader.nextName());
		else if (token.equals(JsonToken.STRING))
			System.out.println(reader.nextString());
		else if (token.equals(JsonToken.NUMBER))
			System.out.println(reader.nextDouble());
		else
			reader.skipValue();
	}
}