[java] How do I pretty-print existing JSON data with Java?

I have a compact JSON string, and I want to format it nicely in Java without having to deserialize it first -- e.g. just like jsonlint.org does it. Are there any libraries out there that provides this?

A similar solution for XML would also be nice.

If you are using jackson you can easily achieve this with configuring a SerializationFeature in your ObjectMapper:

com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();

mapper.configure(SerializationFeature.INDENT_OUTPUT, true);

mapper.writeValueAsString(<yourObject>);

Thats it.

I fount a very simple solution:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.cedarsoftware</groupId>
    <artifactId>json-io</artifactId>
    <version>4.5.0</version>
</dependency>

Java code:

import com.cedarsoftware.util.io.JsonWriter;
//...
String jsonString = "json_string_plain_text";
System.out.println(JsonWriter.formatJson(jsonString));

Underscore-java library has methods U.formatJson(json) and U.formatXml(xml). I am the maintainer of the project.

int spacesToIndentEachLevel = 2;
new JSONObject(jsonString).toString(spacesToIndentEachLevel);

Using org.json.JSONObject (built in to JavaEE and Android)

In one line:

String niceFormattedJson = JsonWriter.formatJson(jsonString)

or

System.out.println(JsonWriter.formatJson(jsonString.toString()));

The json-io libray (https://github.com/jdereg/json-io) is a small (75K) library with no other dependencies than the JDK.

In addition to pretty-printing JSON, you can serialize Java objects (entire Java object graphs with cycles) to JSON, as well as read them in.

Use gson. https://www.mkyong.com/java/how-to-enable-pretty-print-json-output-gson/

Gson gson = new GsonBuilder().setPrettyPrinting().create();
String json = gson.toJson(my_bean);

output

{
  "name": "mkyong",
  "age": 35,
  "position": "Founder",
  "salary": 10000,
  "skills": [
    "java",
    "python",
    "shell"
  ]
}

Another way to use gson:

String json_String_to_print = ...
Gson gson = new GsonBuilder().setPrettyPrinting().create();
JsonParser jp = new JsonParser();
return gson.toJson(jp.parse(json_String_to_print));

It can be used when you don't have the bean as in susemi99's post.