Gson – How to enable pretty print JSON output

By mkyong | Updated: April 23, 2019

Viewed: 23,700 (+224 pv/w)

Tags: gson json pretty print

In this tutorial, we will show you how to enable JSON pretty print in Gson framework.

1. By default, Gson compact-print the JSON output :

package com.mkyong;

import com.google.gson.Gson;

public class GsonExample1 {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        Gson gson = new Gson();

        String[] lang = {"Java", "Node", "Kotlin", "JavaScript"};

        String json = gson.toJson(lang);

        System.out.println(json);

    }

}

Output

["Java","Node","Kotlin","JavaScript"]

2. To enable JSON pretty-print, create Gson object with GsonBuilder

package com.mkyong;

import com.google.gson.Gson;
import com.google.gson.GsonBuilder;

public class GsonExample2 {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        Gson gson = new GsonBuilder().setPrettyPrinting().create();

        String[] lang = {"Java", "Node", "Kotlin", "JavaScript"};

        String json = gson.toJson(lang);

        System.out.println(json);

    }

}

Output

[
  "Java",
  "Node",
  "Kotlin",
  "JavaScript"
]

References

• GsonBuilder Javadocs
• Gson – How to parse JSON examples