JSONObject : Why JSONObject changing the order of attributes [duplicate]

Question

I was trying to construct an JSON String using JSON Object

I want the JSON String to be constructed this way

{
    "Level": "3",
    "Name": "testLogger",
    "IPADDRESS": "testMachiene",
    "Message": "hiiiiiiiiii",
    "TimeStamp": "test12345678"
}

This is my simple program to do so

package com;

import org.json.JSONObject;

public class Teste {

    public static void main(String args[]) throws Exception {

        int loglevel = 3;
        String loggerName = "testLogger";
        String machieneName = "testMachiene";
        String timeStamp = "test12345678";
        String message = "hiiiiiiiiii";

        JSONObject obj = new JSONObject();

        obj.put("TimeStamp", message);
        obj.put("Message", timeStamp);
        obj.put("IPADDRESS", machieneName);
        obj.put("Name", loggerName);
        obj.put("Level", loglevel);

        System.out.println(obj.toString());

    }

}

And it was constructing this way

{
    "Name": "testLogger",
    "TimeStamp": "hiiiiiiiiii",
    "Message": "test12345678",
    "Level": 3,
    "IPADDRESS": "testMachiene"
}

My question is that why its changing the order of attributes

Can i have the order in which i wish ??

Answer 1

See the answer here: JSON order mixed up

You cannot and should not rely on the ordering of elements within a JSON object.

From the JSON specification at http://www.json.org/:

"An object is an unordered set of name/value pairs"

As a consequence, JSON libraries are free to rearrange the order of the elements as they see fit. This is not a bug.

Answer 2

as others have mentioned, JSONObject isn't supposed to keep the same order.

however, if you do wish to have ordered items, you can implement it yourself, and use LinkedHashMap as the container of items for your class.