How do I read JSON file using JSON-Java (org.json) library?

In this example we are going to use the JSON-Java (org.json) library to read or parse JSON file. First we start by getting the InputStream of the JSON file to be read using getResourceAsStream() method. Next we construct a JSONTokener from the input stream and create an instance of JSONObject to read the JSON entries.

We can use method like getString(), getInt(), getLong(), etc. to read a key-value from the JSON file. The getJSONArray() method allow us to read a list of values returned in JSONArray object, which can be iterated to get each values represented by the key. Let’s see the detail code snippet below.

package org.kodejava.json;

import org.json.JSONArray;
import org.json.JSONObject;
import org.json.JSONTokener;

import java.io.InputStream;

public class ReadJSONString {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // info.json
        // {
        //   "id": "1",
        //   "name": "Alice",
        //   "age": "20",
        //   "courses": [
        //     "Engineering",
        //     "Finance",
        //     "Chemistry"
        //   ]
        // }
        String resourceName = "/info.json";
        InputStream is = ReadJSONString.class.getResourceAsStream(resourceName);
        if (is == null) {
            throw new NullPointerException("Cannot find resource file " + resourceName);
        }

        JSONTokener tokener = new JSONTokener(is);
        JSONObject object = new JSONObject(tokener);
        System.out.println("Id  : " + object.getLong("id"));
        System.out.println("Name: " + object.getString("name"));
        System.out.println("Age : " + object.getInt("age"));

        System.out.println("Courses: ");
        JSONArray courses = object.getJSONArray("courses");
        for (int i = 0; i < courses.length(); i++) {
            System.out.println("  - " + courses.get(i));
        }
    }
}

The result of the code snippet above is:

Id  : 1
Name: Alice
Age : 20
Courses: 
  - Engineering
  - Finance
  - Chemistry

Maven Dependencies

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.json</groupId>
        <artifactId>json</artifactId>
        <version>20240303</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>