Mapping complex JSON structures with JDK8 Nashorn

How can you map a complex JSON structure to another JSON structure in Java? I think there are a few possible solutions in Java.

The first solution is to use a serialization framework like Jackson, GSON or smart-json. The mapping is a piece of awkward Java code with a lot of if-else conditions. The result is hard to test and hard to maintain. Schematic it looks like this:

JSON -> Java objects -> Mapping -> Java objects -> JSON

An second approach is to use a templating framwork (like Freemarker or Velocity) in combination with a serialization framwork. The logic of the mapping has moved to the template. Schematic it looks like this:

JSON -> Java objects -> Apply template -> JSON

One of the issues with this approach is that the template must enforce that the result is a valid JSON structure. I have tried this approach and it is really hard to produce a valid JSON structure in all use cases.

You could also map your JSON to XML and create the mapping with an XSL transformations. Schematic it looks like this:

JSON -> XML -> XSL transformation -> XML -> JSON

But the ideal schema looks like this:

JSON -> Mapping -> JSON

With JDK 8 and the Nashorn Javascript engine this becomes possible! This implementation provides JSON.parse() and JSON.stringify() by default.

Example Javascript:

function convert(val) {
  var json = JSON.stringify(val);
  var g = JSON.parse(json);
  var d = {
    chunkId: g.chunk.id,
    timestamp: g.chunk.timestamp
  };
  return JSON.stringify(d);
}

Java code:

private ScriptEngineManager engineManager;
private ScriptEngine engine;

public MyConverter() {
  ClassPathResource resource = new ClassPathResource("/converter.js");
  InputStreamReader reader = new InputStreamReader(resource.getInputStream());
  engineManager = new ScriptEngineManager();
  engine = engineManager.getEngineByName("nashorn");
  engine.eval(reader);
}
public String convert(String val){
  return (String) engine.eval("convert(" + source + ")");
}

I think this is -at this moment- the best approach, Java 9 will ship with native JSON support. Perhaps it will become more easier in the future.

More info can be found on my blog.