JSON Processing (JSON-P / Jakarta JSON Processing) is a standard Java API for parsing, generating, querying, and transforming JSON, offering both a streaming model and an in-memory object model for working with JSON documents.
JSON Processing
JSON Processing, known as JSON-P or Jakarta JSON Processing, is a standard Java API for parsing, generating, querying, and transforming JSON documents. Originally standardized as JSR 374 and now maintained under Jakarta EE, it provides the low-level plumbing for reading and writing JSON without pulling in a third-party library. It is the foundation that higher-level binding APIs build on.
- Streaming model - A pull-parser (
JsonParser) and generator (JsonGenerator) process JSON as a sequence of events, efficient for large documents. - Object model - An in-memory tree of
JsonObject,JsonArray, and value types for random-access reading and building. - JSON Pointer, Patch, and Merge Patch - Standard support for addressing, modifying, and diffing documents (RFC 6901, 6902, 7386).
- Vendor-neutral API - Code targets the specification, with implementations like Eclipse Parsson supplying the runtime.
In real API operations JSON-P is the layer that turns request and response bytes into something a Java service can work with, and it underpins the higher-level JSON Binding API that maps JSON to domain objects. Its JSON Pointer and Patch support map directly onto how APIs express partial updates and reference into payloads. For teams building JSON-heavy services on the JVM, it is the standardized, dependency-light way to handle the wire format the rest of the API stack depends on.
