How can you write raw JSON through Jackson's JsonGenerator?

Question

I want to generate a JSON String in the following structure using Jackson API (JsonFactory,JsonGenerator). How can i do it ?

Expected:

{
    "api": {
        "Salutaion": "Mr",
        "name": "X"
    },
    "additional": {
        "Hello",
        "World"
    }
}

Actual:

{
    "api": "{
        \"Salutaion\": \"Mr\",
        \"name\": \"X\"
    }",
    "additional": "{
        \"Hello\",
        \"World\"
    }"
}

The values of the attributes api & additional will be available to me as String. Should i be using writeObjectField (as follows) ?

jGenerator.writeObjectField("api", apiString);

After constructing the jGenerator object, how do i get the final constructed JSON Object's String representation ?

ByteArrayOutputStream outputStream = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
JsonGenerator jGenerator = jfactory.createJsonGenerator(outputStream);
           jGenerator.writeStartObject();

           jGenerator.writeObjectField("api", apiString);
           jGenerator.writeObjectField("additional", additionalString);

           jGenerator.writeEndObject();                    

           jGenerator.close();        
           outputStream.close();
           outputStream.toString()

The outputStream.toString() gives a json string but the double quotes (") in the apiString are getting prefixed with an escape character \

Is this the right way ?

Answer 1

Assuming apiString and additionalString are references to String objects with JSON content, you'll want to write them raw, ie. their content directly. Otherwise, you're serializing them as JSON strings and Jackson will need to escape any relevant characters.

For example

jGenerator.writeFieldName("api");
jGenerator.writeRawValue(apiString);

for api, and the same for additional.