How do you serialize a Map to JSON in Scala?

Question

So I have a Map in Scala like this:

val m = Map[String, String](
    "a" -> "theA",
    "b" -> "theB",
    "c" -> "theC",
    "d" -> "theD",
    "e" -> "theE"
)

and I want to serialize this structure into a JSON string using lift-json.

Do any of you know how to do this?

Solution 1

If you are using the latest Scala 2.10.x and above :

println(scala.util.parsing.json.JSONObject(m))

Solution 2

You can roll your own pretty easily (yay, no dependencies). This one does basic handling of types and will do recursion unlike JSONObject that was mentioned:

import scala.collection.mutable.ListBuffer

object JsonConverter {
  def toJson(o: Any) : String = {
    var json = new ListBuffer[String]()
    o match {
      case m: Map[_,_] => {
        for ( (k,v) <- m ) {
          var key = escape(k.asInstanceOf[String])
          v match {
            case a: Map[_,_] => json += "\"" + key + "\":" + toJson(a)
            case a: List[_] => json += "\"" + key + "\":" + toJson(a)
            case a: Int => json += "\"" + key + "\":" + a
            case a: Boolean => json += "\"" + key + "\":" + a
            case a: String => json += "\"" + key + "\":\"" + escape(a) + "\""
            case _ => ;
          }
        }
      }
      case m: List[_] => {
        var list = new ListBuffer[String]()
        for ( el <- m ) {
          el match {
            case a: Map[_,_] => list += toJson(a)
            case a: List[_] => list += toJson(a)
            case a: Int => list += a.toString()
            case a: Boolean => list += a.toString()
            case a: String => list += "\"" + escape(a) + "\""
            case _ => ;
          }
        }
        return "[" + list.mkString(",") + "]"
      }
      case _ => ;
    }
    return "{" + json.mkString(",") + "}"
  }

  private def escape(s: String) : String = {
    return s.replaceAll("\"" , "\\\\\"");
  }
}

You can see it in action like

println(JsonConverter.toJson(
    Map("a"-> 1,
        "b" -> Map(
            "nes\"ted" -> "yeah{\"some\":true"),
            "c" -> List(
                1,
                2,
                "3",
                List(
                    true,
                    false,
                    true,
                    Map(
                        "1"->"two",
                        "3"->"four"
                    )
                )
            )
        )
    )
)

{"a":1,"b":{"nes\"ted":"yeah{\"some\":true"},"c":[1,2,"3",[true,false,true,{"1":"two","3":"four"}]]}

(It's part of a Coinbase GDAX library I've written, see util.scala)

Solution 3

You can use this simple way if you are using play framework:

import play.api.libs.json._

Json.toJson(<your_map>)

Solution 4

This code will convert many different objects, and doesn't require any libraries beyond the built-in the scala.util.parsing.json._. It won't properly handle edge cases like Maps with integers as keys.

import scala.util.parsing.json.{JSONArray, JSONObject}
def toJson(arr: List[Any]): JSONArray = {
  JSONArray(arr.map {
    case (innerMap: Map[String, Any]) => toJson(innerMap)
    case (innerArray: List[Any])      => toJson(innerArray)
    case (other)                      => other
  })
}
def toJson(map: Map[String, Any]): JSONObject = {
  JSONObject(map.map {
    case (key, innerMap: Map[String, Any]) =>
      (key, toJson(innerMap))
    case (key, innerArray: List[Any]) =>
      (key, toJson(innerArray))
    case (key, other) =>
      (key, other)
  })
}

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