Simplest way to read json from a URL in java

Question

This might be a dumb question but what is the simplest way to read and parse JSON from URL in Java?

In Groovy, it\

Answer 1

The easiest way: Use gson, google's own goto json library. https://code.google.com/p/google-gson/

Here is a sample. I'm going to this free geolocator website and parsing the json and displaying my zipcode. (just put this stuff in a main method to test it out)

    String sURL = "http://freegeoip.net/json/"; //just a string

    // Connect to the URL using java's native library
    URL url = new URL(sURL);
    URLConnection request = url.openConnection();
    request.connect();

    // Convert to a JSON object to print data
    JsonParser jp = new JsonParser(); //from gson
    JsonElement root = jp.parse(new InputStreamReader((InputStream) request.getContent())); //Convert the input stream to a json element
    JsonObject rootobj = root.getAsJsonObject(); //May be an array, may be an object. 
    String zipcode = rootobj.get("zip_code").getAsString(); //just grab the zipcode