How can i add double quotes to look like json

Question

i am having below string but i want to add double quotes in it to look like json

[
{
   LastName=abc, 
   FirstName=xyz, 
   [email protected], 
   IncludeInEmails=false
},
{ 
  LastName=mno, 
  FirstName=pqr, 
  [email protected], 
  IncludeInEmails=true
}
]

i want below output.

[
    {
       "LastName"="abc", 
       "FirstName"="xyz", 
       "EmailAddress"="[email protected]", 
       "IncludeInEmails"=false
    },
    { 
      "LastName"="mno", 
      "FirstName"="pqr", 
      "EmailAddress"="[email protected]", 
      "IncludeInEmails"=true
    }
    ]

i have tried some string regex. but didn't got. could any one please help.

String text= jsonString.replaceAll("[^\\{\\},]+", "\"$0\"");
System.out.println(text);

thanks

Answer 1

The regex way, similar to you have tried:

    String jsonString = "[ \n" + "{ \n" + "   LastName=abc,  \n" + "   FirstName=xyz,  \n"
            + "   [email protected],  \n" + "   IncludeInEmails=false \n" + "}, \n" + "{  \n"
            + "  LastName=mno,  \n" + "  FirstName=pqr,  \n" + "  [email protected],  \n" + "  Number=123,  \n"
            + "  IncludeInEmails=true \n" + "} \n" + "] \n";

    System.out.println("Before:\n" + jsonString);
    jsonString = jsonString.replaceAll("([\\w]+)[ ]*=", "\"$1\" ="); // to quote before = value
    jsonString = jsonString.replaceAll("=[ ]*([\\w@\\.]+)", "= \"$1\""); // to quote after = value, add special character as needed to the exclusion list in regex
    jsonString = jsonString.replaceAll("=[ ]*\"([\\d]+)\"", "= $1"); // to un-quote decimal value
    jsonString = jsonString.replaceAll("\"true\"", "true"); // to un-quote boolean
    jsonString = jsonString.replaceAll("\"false\"", "false"); // to un-quote boolean

    System.out.println("===============================");
    System.out.println("After:\n" + jsonString);

Answer 2

Since there are a lot of corner cases, like character escaping, booleans, numbers, ... a simple regex won't do.

You could split the input string by newline and then handle each key-value-pair separately

for (String line : input.split("\\R")) {
    // split by "=" and handle key and value
}

But again, you will have to handle char. escaping, booleans, ... (and btw, = is not a valid JSON key-value separator, only : is).

I'd suggest using GSON since it provides lenient parsing. Using Maven you can add it to your project with this dependency:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.google.code.gson</groupId>
    <artifactId>gson</artifactId>
    <version>2.6.2</version>
</dependency>

You can then parse your input string using

String output = new JsonParser()
    .parse(input)
    .toString();