How to parse JSON in Kotlin?

Question

I'm receiving a quite deep JSON object string from a service which I must parse to a JSON object and then map it to classes.

How can I transform a JSON string to object in Kotlin?

After that the mapping to the respective classes, I was using StdDeserializer from Jackson. The problem arises at the moment the object had properties that also had to be deserialized into classes. I was not able to get the object mapper, at least I didn't know how, inside another deserializer.

Thanks in advance for any help. Preferably, natively, I'm trying to reduce the number of dependencies I need so if the answer is only for JSON manipulation and parsing it'd be enough.

Answer 1

There is no question that the future of parsing in Kotlin will be with kotlinx.serialization. It is part of Kotlin libraries. Version kotlinx.serialization 1.0 is finally released

https://github.com/Kotlin/kotlinx.serialization

import kotlinx.serialization.*
import kotlinx.serialization.json.JSON

@Serializable
data class MyModel(val a: Int, @Optional val b: String = "42")

fun main(args: Array<String>) {

    // serializing objects
    val jsonData = JSON.stringify(MyModel.serializer(), MyModel(42))
    println(jsonData) // {"a": 42, "b": "42"}
    
    // serializing lists
    val jsonList = JSON.stringify(MyModel.serializer().list, listOf(MyModel(42)))
    println(jsonList) // [{"a": 42, "b": "42"}]

    // parsing data back
    val obj = JSON.parse(MyModel.serializer(), """{"a":42}""")
    println(obj) // MyModel(a=42, b="42")
}