Convert JSON to List of map java

In this article, we'll convert a JSON array into a Java Array and Java List using Jackson.

Since we're using Jackson, you'll have to add it to your project. If you're using Maven, it's as easy as adding the dependency:

Or, if you're using Gradle:

Since we're mapping from JSON to our own objects, let's go ahead and define a POJO:

Reading JSON from a String

Let's start out with reading JSON from a String. The String contains an array of programming languages, with brief descriptions:

Using Jackson's ObjectMapper class, it's easy to read values and map them to an object, or an array of objects. We just use the readValue() method, passing the JSON contents and the class we'd like to map to. Since we're mapping to an array of Language, we'll also specify this in the readValue() method:

Alternatively, you can extract the values directly into a list, using Jackson's TypeReference: