Question

Have a couple questions, using GSON. I have a feeling that GSON might not be what I am looking for in terms of a library that will be able to give me a JSON object that I can use later.

I am reading data from a database to populate a json object that I will later use. The output of the json object should look similar to the json below, which involves parents and children. It forms a small tree based structure:

var json = { 
         id: "1", 
         name: "Joe Smith", 
         data: { 
         "email": "",
         "phone": "123-123-1233"},
         children: [{
                        id: "Tim Anderson",
                        name: "Tim Anderson",
                        data: { 
                             "email": "[e-mail]",
                             "phone": "123-123-1233"
                        },
                        children: []
                    },{
                        id: "Christopher Johnson",
                        name: "Christopher Johnson",
                        data: {  
                             "email": "[e-mail]",
                             "phone": "123-123-1233"
                        },
                        children: []
                    },{
                        id: "Kate Green",
                        name: "Kate Green",
                        data: {

                        },
                        children: [{
                            id: "Gary Jones",
                            name: "Gary Jones",
                            data: {},
                            children: []
                        }, {
                            id: "Melissa Brand",
                            name: "Melissa Brand",
                            data: {},
                            children: []
                        }]
                    }
                    ] 
    }

How do I create a GSON object, similar to the structure above, that I can serialize to JSON that has this type of hierarchy? I’ve tried using maps and other collections – but I am having difficulty getting the results I want. Hence why I ask if GSON is what I really want for a JSON serialization.

Answer 1

Let me give you a hint

make a Person and a Data class (POJO) like this

Person
  String id
  String name
  Data data
  List<Person> children

Data
  String email
  String phone