Json is an open standard file format which uses readable text to store and transfer data objects. In this tutorial we are looking at how we can convert a Byte Array in to a Json String with Java.

For this conversion we have used Jackson JSON processor for Java.

Add the library as below

<!-- https://mvnrepository.com/artifact/com.fasterxml.jackson.core/jackson-core -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackson-core</artifactId>
    <version>2.13.3</version>
</dependency>

We are mainly using the ObjectMapper class in Jackson which provides functionality for reading and writing JSON.

is a feature that determines whether it is acceptable to coerce non-array(in JSON) values to handle with Java collection.

DeserializationFeature.ACCEPT_SINGLE_VALUE_AS_ARRAY feature can be used for compatibility/interoperability reasons,to work with different JSON converters(eg. XML to JSON)) and that leave out JSONarray in cases where there is just a single element in array.

	protected List<Map<?, ?>> convertToMap(byte[] data)
			throws JsonParseException, JsonMappingException, IOException {

		List<Map<?, ?>> dataList = null;

		ObjectMapper objMapper = new ObjectMapper();
		objMapper.configure(DeserializationFeature.ACCEPT_SINGLE_VALUE_AS_ARRAY, true);
		dataList = objMapper.readValue(data, new TypeReference<List<Map<?, ?>>>() {
		});

		return dataList;
	}