JSON Formatting with Jersey, Jackson, & json.org/java

[James Dekker]

Using Java 6, Tomcat 7, Jersey 1.15, Jackson 2.0.6 (from FasterXml maven repo), & www.json.org parser, I am trying to
pretty print the JSON String so it will look indented by the curl -X GET command line.

I created a simple web service which has the following architecture:

My POJOs (model classes):

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

@XmlRootElement
public class Family {
	private String father;
	private String mother;
	
	private List<Children> children;
		
	// Getter & Setters
}

import javax.xml.bind.annotation.XmlRootElement;

@XmlRootElement
public class Children {
	private String name;
	private String age;
	private String gender;
	
	// Getters & Setters
}

Using a Utility Class, I decided to hard code the POJOs as follows:

public class FamilyUtil {

	public static Family getFamily() {
		Family family = new Family();
		family.setFather("Joe");
		family.setMother("Jennifer");

		Children child = new Children();
		child.setName("Jimmy");
		child.setAge("12");
		child.setGender("male");
		List<Children> children = new ArrayList<Children>();

		children.add(child);

		family.setChildren(children);
		return family;
	}
}

My web service:

import java.io.IOException;

import javax.ws.rs.GET;
import javax.ws.rs.Path;
import javax.ws.rs.PathParam;
import javax.ws.rs.Produces;
import javax.ws.rs.core.MediaType;

import org.codehaus.jackson.JsonGenerationException;
import org.codehaus.jackson.map.JsonMappingException;
import org.codehaus.jackson.map.ObjectMapper;
import org.codehaus.jettison.json.JSONException;
import org.json.JSONObject;
import org.json.JSONTokener;

import com.myapp.util.FamilyUtil;

@Path("")
public class MyWebService {

	@GET
	@Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
	public static String getFamily() throws IOException, 
											JsonGenerationException, 
											JsonMappingException, 
											JSONException, 
											org.json.JSONException {
		ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper(); 
		String uglyJsonString = mapper.writeValueAsString(FamilyUtil.getFamily());
		System.out.println(uglyJsonString);
		JSONTokener tokener = new JSONTokener(uglyJsonString);
		JSONObject finalResult = new JSONObject(tokener);
		return finalResult.toString(4);	        
	}
}

When I run this using:

curl -X GET http://localhost:8080/mywebservice

I get this in my Eclipse's console:

{"father":"Joe","mother":"Jennifer","children":[{"name":"Jimmy","age":"12","gender":"male"}]}

But from the curl command on the command line (this response is more important):

"{\n \"mother\": \"Jennifer\",\n \"children\": [{\n \"age\": \"12\",\n \"name\": \"Jimmy\",\n \"gender\": \"male\"\n }],\n \"father\": \"Joe\"\n}"

This is similar to the response I was getting just using plain old Jackson, see this post.

Would appreciate it if someone could point me in the right direction.

[Praful Thakare]

have answered it to your original post.