Convert JSON String to Pretty Print JSON output using Jackson

The simplest and also the most compact solution (for v2.3.3):

ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
mapper.enable(SerializationFeature.INDENT_OUTPUT);
mapper.writeValueAsString(obj)

ObjectMapper.readTree() can do this in one line:

mapper.readTree(json).toPrettyString();

Since readTree produces a JsonNode, this should pretty much always produce equivalent pretty-formatted JSON, as it JsonNode is a direct tree representation of the underlying JSON string.

Prior to Jackson 2.10

The JsonNode.toPrettyString() method was added in Jackson 2.10. Prior to that, a second call to the ObjectMapper was needed to write the pretty formatted result:

mapper.writerWithDefaultPrettyPrinter()
        .writeValueAsString(mapper.readTree(json));

The new way using Jackson 1.9+ is the following:

Object json = OBJECT_MAPPER.readValue(diffResponseJson, Object.class);
String indented = OBJECT_MAPPER.writerWithDefaultPrettyPrinter()
                               .writeValueAsString(json);

The output will be correctly formatted!

For Jackson 1.9, We can use the following code for pretty print.

ObjectMapper objectMapper = new ObjectMapper();
objectMapper.enable(SerializationConfig.Feature.INDENT_OUTPUT);

I think, this is the simplest technique to beautify the json data,

String indented = (new JSONObject(Response)).toString(4);

where Response is a String.

Simply pass the 4(indentSpaces) in toString() method.

Note: It works fine in the android without any library. But in java you have to use the org.json library.

You can achieve this using bellow ways:

1. Using Jackson

    String formattedData=new ObjectMapper().writerWithDefaultPrettyPrinter()
.writeValueAsString(YOUR_JSON_OBJECT);

Import bellow class:

import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;

It's gradle dependency is :

compile 'com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-core:2.7.3'
compile 'com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-annotations:2.7.3'
compile 'com.fasterxml.jackson.core:jackson-databind:2.7.3'

2. Using Gson from Google

String formattedData=new GsonBuilder().setPrettyPrinting()
    .create().toJson(YOUR_OBJECT);

Import bellow class:

import com.google.gson.Gson;

It's gradle is:

compile 'com.google.code.gson:gson:2.8.2'

Here, you can also download correct updated version from repository.

This looks like it might be the answer to your question. It says it's using Spring, but I think that should still help you in your case. Let me inline the code here so it's more convenient:

import java.io.FileReader;

import org.codehaus.jackson.map.ObjectMapper;
import org.codehaus.jackson.map.ObjectWriter;

public class Foo
{
  public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
  {
    ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
    MyClass myObject = mapper.readValue(new FileReader("input.json"), MyClass.class);
    // this is Jackson 1.x API only: 
    ObjectWriter writer = mapper.defaultPrettyPrintingWriter();
    // ***IMPORTANT!!!*** for Jackson 2.x use the line below instead of the one above: 
    // ObjectWriter writer = mapper.writer().withDefaultPrettyPrinter();
    System.out.println(writer.writeValueAsString(myObject));
  }
}

class MyClass
{
  String one;
  String[] two;
  MyOtherClass three;

  public String getOne() {return one;}
  void setOne(String one) {this.one = one;}
  public String[] getTwo() {return two;}
  void setTwo(String[] two) {this.two = two;}
  public MyOtherClass getThree() {return three;}
  void setThree(MyOtherClass three) {this.three = three;}
}

class MyOtherClass
{
  String four;
  String[] five;

  public String getFour() {return four;}
  void setFour(String four) {this.four = four;}
  public String[] getFive() {return five;}
  void setFive(String[] five) {this.five = five;}
}

Since jackson-databind:2.10 JsonNode has the toPrettyString() method to easily format JSON:

objectMapper
  .readTree("{}")
  .toPrettyString()
;

From the docs:

public String toPrettyString()

Alternative to toString() that will serialize this node using Jackson default pretty-printer.

Since:
2.10

Anyone using POJO, DDO, or response class for returning their JSON can use spring.jackson.serialization.indent-output=true in their property file. It auto-formats the response.

If you format the string and return object like RestApiResponse<String>, you'll get unwanted characters like escaping etc: \n, \". Solution is to convert your JSON-string into Jackson JsonNode object and return RestApiResponse<JsonNode>:

ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
JsonNode tree = objectMapper.readTree(jsonString);
RestApiResponse<JsonNode> response = new RestApiResponse<>();
apiResponse.setData(tree);
return response;

To pretty print JSON in Java using Jackson

String sampleJsonString = ""; // JSON String
objectMapper.writerWithDefaultPrettyPrinter().writeValueAsString(sampleJsonString);

Similarly you can pass any Java Type

Object javaType = any java Type; // Could be String, Map, List
objectMapper.writerWithDefaultPrettyPrinter().writeValueAsString(javaType);

If you would like to enable the pretty print one time or globally in your code

objectMapper.enable(SerializationFeature.INDENT_OUTPUT);

Optionally if you are parsing JSON with comments or a file with jsonc extension

Enable this setting for your JACKSON ObjectMapper

objectMapper.configure(JsonParser.Feature.ALLOW_COMMENTS, true);