Parsing a JSON object with invalid key values using Spring boot

Question

I've been using Spring boot for a while now so I can say that I am pretty comfortable with using it.

However there is one problem that I can never solve. When I want my Spring boot server to consume a JSON object coming from the front end I usually use @RequestBody like this: If the JSON object looks like this:

{"name":"Jason"}

I would create a POJO like this:

public class User{
    private String name;

    public void setName(String name){
        this.name=name;
    }


    public String getName(){
        return this.name
    }
}

And then in my main controller i would simply use @RequestBody like this:

@RequestMapping(value="createUser", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public void createUser(@RequestBody User user){
    //code here
}

And this would work because the key "name" in the JSON object matches the attribute "name" of the Java User object.

However, in my current project there I have to consume a JSON objects with keys like {" # Name ":"Jason"}

In this case I can not create a POJO object with an attribute called # Name because obviously an object's attribute cannot start with # and cannot have spaces.

When faced with problems like this I usually do

@RequestBody HashMap<String, String> map

and then

User newUser = new User();
newUser.setName(map.get(" # Name"));

However when you have a JSON object with 40+ keys this can become troublesome.

Is there an easier way to parse JSON objects with keys that would appear invalid in Java like this?

Thanks a lot!

Answer 1

Try annotating your name member with @JsonProperty .

@JsonProperty(" # name")
private String name;

This will allow the deserialiser to match the key in your JSON payload with your POJO member.