JSONtoMap

JSONtoMap is a greatly scaled-down JSON parser and companion expander that works with a subset of the JSON spec and returns a nested structure of Maps and Lists that contain only String keys and values. I wrote JSONtoMap because I needed something better than a Java Properties files that supported a simple, heirarchical data format consisting of String data. The output from the parse() function is a Map that an contain other Maps and Lists. Note: no access spacial functions are provided so you'll need to use the regular access functions for Maps and Lists to get at the data in the Map returned from parse().

The two main functions provided in JSONtoMap are:

public static Map<String,Object> parse (String src)

which parses a simplfied version of JSON and convert into a nested structure of Map and List objects, and:

public static String expand (Map<String,Object> obj)

which converts a structure of nested Map and List objects (such as the output from parse()) into an indented JSON file in a String. Here is a typical example of what returned when you call expand() on a Map returned from parse():

Example JSON output from expand()

{
 "firstName" : "John",
 "lastName" : "Smith",
 "isAlive" : "true",
 "age" : "27",
 "address" : {
  "streetAddress" : "21 2nd Street",
  "city" : "New York",
  "state" : "NY",
  "postalCode" : "10021-3100",
 },
 "phoneNumbers" : [
   "type" : "home",
   "number" : "212 555-1234",
   "type" : "office",
   "number" : "646 555-4567",
 ],
 "children" : [
 ],
 "spouse" : "",
}