Question

I am using the Jackson JSON library to map JSON streams into POJO’s.

My JSON’s keys have unpredictable names.
i.e

{
  "Random_ID": 
   {
        "Another_Random_ID":  
        {
            "some_key": "value"
            "some_key1": "value1"
        }
   }
   ...  
}

I would like to map this request to a POJO (with the same structure), however the mapper will fail since there is no such setXXX (where XXX is a random_id – since i cannot predict the name).

What would be the best way to map this request to the corresponding object without manually parsing it with createJsonParser.

Answer 1

If names are unpredictable, POJOs are not the way to go.

But you can use the Tree Model, like:

JsonNode root = objectMapper.readTree(jsonSource);

and access it as a logical tree. Also, if you do want to convert the tree (or any of sub-trees, as identified by node that is the root of sub-tree), you can do:

MyPOJO pojo = objectMapper.treeToValue(node, MyPOJO.class);

and back to tree

JsonNode node = objectMapper.valueToTree(pojo);