Jackson

Jackson is a popular and highly efficient [[Java]] library used for serializing Java objects to JSON ([[Jackson]]) and deserializing JSON back into Java objects. It is widely used in Java applications for processing JSON data due to its performance, flexibility, and ease of use.

Jackson excels at converting Java objects to JSON and vice versa, making it a go-to choice for Java applications that need to work with JSON, such as [[REST APIs|RESTful]] web services.

While default serialization and deserialization often work out-of-the-box, Jackson allows for extensive customization via annotations. These annotations can be used to include, exclude, and alter the properties of Java objects being serialized.

Jackson's Data Binding API provides a high-level facade over its streaming API, simplifying the task of converting between JSON and Java objects. Jackson provides a tree model for representing JSON as node trees. This is similar to [[Document Object Model|DOM]] for XML and is useful for flexible processing of JSON data.

For high-performance applications, Jackson offers a streaming API that reads and writes JSON with minimal overhead. Although primarily known for JSON, Jackson can also handle other data formats such as XML, CSV, YAML, and more through various extensions.

Jackson integrates seamlessly with many Java web frameworks like [[Spring Framework|Spring]], [[Dropwizard]], and [[RESTEasy]], making it a default choice for building RESTful web services in Java. It allows the creation of custom serializers and deserializers for complex data types that might need special handling.

Jackson's widespread adoption and active development mean a wealth of documentation, tutorials, and community support is available. Jackson has a modular structure, allowing developers to use only parts they need, which helps in keeping the application lightweight.