Jackson ObjectMapper with arbitrary JSON keys

Question

I'm using Jackson 1.9.5 in an Android project to parse JSON files.

So far I haven't had any problems, and can parse files fine using the following code:

AssetManager mgr = getAssets();
ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();

try {
    InputStream ifp = mgr.open("detail_schema.json");
    schema = mapper.readValue(ifp, DetailSchema.class);
} catch (IOException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Where the DetailSchema class consists of a mix of primitive types and classes. I'm now running into a problem where I want to parse some JSON like the following:

"fields": {
    "Suburb": "Paddington",
    "State": "NSW",
    "Post Code": "2074",
    "Lollipop": "Foo Bar Haz"
}

Where I can't possibly know the map keys before hand (they can be user-defined). As such, I'm not sure what the associated Java class should look like.

Ie, for this example, it could look like:

public class MyClass {

    public String Suburb;
    public String State;
    public String PostCode;
    public String Lollipop;

}

But this may not be correct for another instance of the JSON file. Ideally I need some way for Jackson to map values to something like a NameValuePair. I suspect that the automatic object mapping may not be an option in this case - can someone confirm or deny this?

Jackson ObjectMapper with arbitrary JSON keys

1 Answers