Convert a list of objects to JSON using the Gson library in Java?

A Gson is a library that can be used to convert Java Objects to JSON representation. It can also be used to convert a JSON string to an equivalent Java object. The primary class to use is Gson which we can create by calling the new Gson() and the GsonBuilder class can be used to create a Gson instance.

We can convert a list of objects by first creating a Person class and convert a list of Person objects to JSON.

Example

import java.util.*;
import java.util.stream.*;
import com.google.gson.*;
public class JSONConverterTest {
   public static void main( String[] args ) {
      Gson gson = new GsonBuilder().setPrettyPrinting().create();
      List list = Stream.of(new Person("Raja", "Ramesh", 30, "9959984800"),
                            new Person("Jai", "Dev", 25, "7702144400"),
                            new Person("Adithya", "Sai", 21, "7013536200"),
                            new Person("Chaitanya", "Sai", 28, "9656444150"))
                            .collect(Collectors.toList());
      System.out.println("Convert list of person objects to Json:");
      String json = gson.toJson(list); // converts to json
      System.out.println(json);
   }
}
// Person class
class Person {
   private String firstName, lastName, contact;
   private int age;
   public Person(String firstName, String lastName, int age, String contact) {
      this.firstName = firstName;
      this.lastName = lastName;
      this.age = age;
      this.contact = contact;
   }
   public String toString() {
      return "[" + firstName + " " + lastName + " " + age + " " +contact +"]";
   }
}

Output

Convert list of person objects to Json:
[
{
   "firstName": "Raja",
   "lastName": "Ramesh",
   "contact": "9959984800",
   "age": 30
},
{
   "firstName": "Jai",
   "lastName": "Dev",
   "contact": "7702144400",
   "age": 25
},
{
   "firstName": "Adithya",
   "lastName": "Sai",
   "contact": "7013536200",
   "age": 21
},
{
   "firstName": "Chaitanya",
   "lastName": "Sai",
   "contact": "9656444150",
   "age": 28
}
]