Converting Java objects to JSON with Jackson

To convert your object in JSON with Jackson:

import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper; 
import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectWriter; 

ObjectWriter ow = new ObjectMapper().writer().withDefaultPrettyPrinter();
String json = ow.writeValueAsString(object);

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I know this is old (and I am new to java), but I ran into the same problem. And the answers were not as clear to me as a newbie... so I thought I would add what I learned.

I used a third-party library to aid in the endeavor: org.codehaus.jackson All of the downloads for this can be found here.

For base JSON functionality, you need to add the following jars to your project's libraries: jackson-mapper-asl and jackson-core-asl

Choose the version your project needs. (Typically you can go with the latest stable build).

Once they are imported in to your project's libraries, add the following import lines to your code:

 import org.codehaus.jackson.JsonGenerationException;
 import org.codehaus.jackson.map.JsonMappingException;
 import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;

With the java object defined and assigned values that you wish to convert to JSON and return as part of a RESTful web service

User u = new User();
u.firstName = "Sample";
u.lastName = "User";
u.email = "sampleU@example.com";

ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
    
try {
    // convert user object to json string and return it 
    return mapper.writeValueAsString(u);
}
catch (JsonGenerationException | JsonMappingException  e) {
    // catch various errors
    e.printStackTrace();
}

The result should looks like this: {"firstName":"Sample","lastName":"User","email":"sampleU@example.com"}

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Just follow any of these:

For jackson it should work: ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper(); return mapper.writeValueAsString(object); //will return json in string

For gson it should work: Gson gson = new Gson(); return Response.ok(gson.toJson(yourClass)).build();

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This might be useful:

objectMapper.writeValue(new File("c:\\employee.json"), employee);

// display to console
Object json = objectMapper.readValue(
     objectMapper.writeValueAsString(employee), Object.class);

System.out.println(objectMapper.writerWithDefaultPrettyPrinter()
     .writeValueAsString(json));

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You could do this:

String json = new ObjectMapper().writeValueAsString(yourObjectHere);

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You can use Google Gson like this

UserEntity user = new UserEntity();
user.setUserName("UserName");
user.setUserAge(18);

Gson gson = new Gson();
String jsonStr = gson.toJson(user);

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Well, even the accepted answer does not exactly output what op has asked for. It outputs the JSON string but with " characters escaped. So, although might be a little late, I am answering hopeing it will help people! Here is how I do it:

StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
JsonGenerator jgen = new JsonFactory().createGenerator(writer);
jgen.setCodec(new ObjectMapper());
jgen.writeObject(object);
jgen.close();
System.out.println(writer.toString());

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Note: To make the most voted solution work, attributes in the POJO have to be public or have a public getter/setter:

By default, Jackson 2 will only work with fields that are either public, or have a public getter method – serializing an entity that has all fields private or package private will fail.

Not tested yet, but I believe that this rule also applies for other JSON libs like google Gson.

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public class JSONConvector {

    public static String toJSON(Object object) throws JSONException, IllegalAccessException {
        String str = "";
        Class c = object.getClass();
        JSONObject jsonObject = new JSONObject();
        for (Field field : c.getDeclaredFields()) {
            field.setAccessible(true);
            String name = field.getName();
            String value = String.valueOf(field.get(object));
            jsonObject.put(name, value);
        }
        System.out.println(jsonObject.toString());
        return jsonObject.toString();
    }


    public static String toJSON(List list ) throws JSONException, IllegalAccessException {
        JSONArray jsonArray = new JSONArray();
        for (Object i : list) {
            String jstr = toJSON(i);
            JSONObject jsonObject = new JSONObject(jstr);
            jsonArray.put(jsonArray);
        }
        return jsonArray.toString();
    }
}

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