History
The Gson library was originally developed for internal purposes of Google, and Version 1.0 was later released on May 22, 2008 under the terms of Apache License 2.0. The latest version, 2.9.1, was released on Jul 31, 2022.
Usage
Gson uses reflection, so it does not require classes being serialized or de-serialized to be modified. By default, it just needs the class to have defined a default no-args constructor (which can be worked around, see Features).
The following example demonstrates the most basic usage of Gson when serializing a sample object:
package example;
public class Car {
public String manufacturer;
public String model;
public double capacity;
public boolean accident;
public Car() {
}
public Car(String manufacturer, String model, double capacity, boolean accident) {
this.manufacturer = manufacturer;
this.model = model;
this.capacity = capacity;
this.accident = accident;
}
@Override
public String toString() {
return ("Manufacturer: " + manufacturer + ", " + "Model: " + model + ", " + "Capacity: " + capacity + ", " + "Accident: " + accident);
}
}
package example;
public class Person {
public String name;
public String surname;
public Car[] cars;
public int phone;
public transient int age;
public Person() {
}
public Person(String name, String surname, int phone, int age, Car[] cars) {
this.name = name;
this.surname = surname;
this.cars = cars;
this.phone = phone;
this.age = age;
}
@Override
public String toString() {
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.append("Name: ").append(name).append(" ").append(surname).append("\n");
sb.append("Phone: ").append(phone).append("\n");
sb.append("Age: ").append(age).append("\n");
int i = 0;
for (Car car : cars) {
i++;
sb.append("Car ").append(i).append(": ").append(car).append("\n");
}
return sb.toString();
}
}
After calling the code of the following Main class:
package main;
import example.Car;
import example.Person;
import com.google.gson.Gson;
import com.google.gson.GsonBuilder;
public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
// Enable pretty printing for demonstration purposes
// Can also directly create instance with `new Gson()`; this will produce compact JSON
Gson gson = new GsonBuilder().setPrettyPrinting().create();
Car audi = new Car("Audi", "A4", 1.8, false);
Car skoda = new Car("Škoda", "Octavia", 2.0, true);
Car[] cars = {audi, skoda};
Person johnDoe = new Person("John", "Doe", 2025550191, 35, cars);
System.out.println(gson.toJson(johnDoe));
}
}
You will get this JSON output:
{
"name": "John",
"surname": "Doe",
"cars": [
{
"manufacturer": "Audi",
"model": "A4",
"capacity": 1.8,
"accident": false
},
{
"manufacturer": "Škoda",
"model": "Octavia",
"capacity": 2.0,
"accident": true
}
],
"phone": 2025550191
}
Since the Person's field "age" is marked as transient, it is not included in the output.
To deserialize the output produced by the last example, you can execute the following code:
package main;
import example.Person;
import com.google.gson.Gson;
public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Gson gson = new Gson();
String json = "{\"name\":\"John\",\"surname\":\"Doe\",\"cars\":[{\"manufacturer\":\"Audi\",\"model\":\"A4\"," +
"\"capacity\":1.8,\"accident\":false},{\"manufacturer\":\"Škoda\",\"model\":\"Octavia\",\"capacity\"" +
":2.0,\"accident\":true}],\"phone\":2025550191}";
Person johnDoe = gson.fromJson(json, Person.class);
System.out.println(johnDoe.toString());
}
}
And the following output will be generated:
Name: John Doe
Phone: 2025550191
Age: 0
Car 1: Manufacturer: Audi, Model: A4, Capacity: 1.8, Accident: false
Car 2: Manufacturer: Škoda, Model: Octavia, Capacity: 2.0, Accident: true
For the above example the following shows how Gson can be used with the Java Platform Module System:
module GsonExample {
requires com.google.gson;
// Open package declared in the example above to allow Gson to use reflection on classes
// inside the package (and also access non-public fields)
opens example to com.google.gson;
}
See Gson's usage guide on their GitHub repository for more extensive examples.
