json-filter

High-speed stream-based filtering of arbitrarily large JSON documents.

This library takes extraordinary pains to insure that Java objects are not created unnecessarily while processing the input and output streams.

There are no dependencies on any third-party JSON libraries to ensure small code size, and to maximum performance of JSON streaming for the purpose of filtering.

Applications:

• Redacting content that client is not allowed to see
• Reducing the size of large JSON before parsing using a library like Jackson

Requirements

• Compatible with Java 8+

Usage

Filtering a JSON stream is very easy:

// configure input and output streams
JsonReader reader = new JsonReader(<instance of java.io.Reader>)
JsonWriter writer = new JsonWriter(<instance of java.io.Writer>)

// configure filter
JsonFilterOptions opts = ImmutableJsonFilterOptions.builder() //
  .addExcludes("some/path/to/exclude") //
  .addExcludes("another/path/to/exclude") //
  .pretty(true) //
  .build();
  
// execute filter
JsonFilter filter = new JsonFilter(reader,writer,options);
filter.process();

Paths

Paths are used to identify JSON fragments that should be included or excluded. The forward slash (/) character can be used to identify nested JSON elements.

Consider the following JSON:

{
  "store": {
    "book": [
      {
        "category": "reference",
        "author": "Nigel Rees",
        "title": "Sayings of the Century",
        "price": 8.95
      },
      {
        "category": "fiction",
        "author": "Evelyn Waugh",
        "title": "Sword of Honour",
        "price": 12.99
      },
      {
        "category": "fiction",
        "author": "Herman Melville",
        "title": "Moby Dick",
        "isbn": "0-553-21311-3",
        "price": 8.99
      },
      {
        "category": "fiction",
        "author": "J. R. R. Tolkien",
        "title": "The Lord of the Rings",
        "isbn": "0-395-19395-8",
        "price": 22.99
      }
    ],
    "bicycle": {
      "color": "red",
      "price": 19.95
    }
  },
  "expensive": 10
}

The following paths could be constructed:

• expensive would resolve to a single node with a value of 10
• store/book/category would resolve to 4 nodes with values of reference and fiction.
• store/bicycle/color would resolve to a single node with a value of 19.95.

Note that paths do not need to contain array indices, e.g. []. In the example above, store/book is an array, but the path store/book/category implies traversal through the elements of each of book.

Installation

The library is available on Maven Central.

Maven

Add the following to your pom.xml:

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <id>central</id>
        <name>Central Repository</name>
        <url>http://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2</url>
        <releases>
            <enabled>true</enabled>
        </releases>
    </repository>
</repositories>

...

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.arakelian</groupId>
    <artifactId>json-filter</artifactId>
    <version>4.0.1</version>
    <scope>compile</scope>
</dependency>

Gradle

Add the following to your build.gradle:

repositories {
  mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
  compile 'com.arakelian:json-filter:4.0.1'
}

Licence

Apache Version 2.0