Instant GSON

In this section, we will cover the JSON data exchange format and its significance, and give an introduction to the GSON library. Finally, we will look up the GSON library and its top features.

This chapter distills the theory of data exchange format from the main core. No previous knowledge about the subject is necessary, but I assume that you are familiar with the fundamentals of JavaScript.

The data exchange format is a very vital area of information technology. Data is read and consumed by many heterogeneous applications to form information. The heterogeneous nature means these applications take the input data in their proprietary format. This requires the input data to be preformatted before it is consumed by the main application, which adds an additional level of complexity to an application. To address this need, a common data exchange format is put in place for communication. This has led to the origin of many popular standard formats such as XML, YAML, and JSON.

Java...

In this section, you will learn about configuring the GSON library in Eclipse IDE for a simple Java project and a Maven type project.

In this section, you will learn different ways to instantiate GSON and their significance, followed by a quick example code that shows the basic serialization of wrapper type Java objects.

Gsongson = new GsonBuilder ().create ();

In this section, you will learn about the top features supported by the GSON library. You will also learn about how to implement these features.

Java objects support

Objects in GSON are referred as types of JsonElement:

The GSON library can convert any user-defined class objects to and from the JSON representation. The Student class is a user-defined class, and GSON can serialize any Student object to JSON.

The Student.java class is as follows:

public class Student {

private String name;

private String subject;

privateint mark;

public String getName() {
return name;
}

public void setName(String name) {
this.name = name;
}

public String getSubject() {
return subject;
}

public void setSubject(String subject) {
this.subject = subject;
}

public int getMark() {
return mark;
}

public void setMark(int mark) {
this.mark = mark;
}

}

The code for JavaObjectFeaturesUse.java is as follows:

import com.google.gson.Gson;
importcom.packt.chapter.vo.Student;

public...

If you need help with GSON, here are some people and places that will prove invaluable: