How to check whether a given string is valid JSON in Java

JACKSON Library

One option would be to use Jackson library. First import the latest version (now is):

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.fasterxml.jackson.core</groupId>
    <artifactId>jackson-databind</artifactId>
    <version>2.7.0</version>
</dependency>

Then, you can implement the correct answer as follows:

import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;

public final class JSONUtils {
  private JSONUtils(){}

  public static boolean isJSONValid(String jsonInString ) {
    try {
       final ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper();
       mapper.readTree(jsonInString);
       return true;
    } catch (IOException e) {
       return false;
    }
  }
}

---

Google GSON option

Another option is to use Google Gson. Import the dependency:

<dependency>
    <groupId>com.google.code.gson</groupId>
    <artifactId>gson</artifactId>
    <version>2.5</version>
</dependency>

Again, you can implement the proposed solution as:

import com.google.gson.Gson;

public final class JSONUtils {
  private static final Gson gson = new Gson();

  private JSONUtils(){}

  public static boolean isJSONValid(String jsonInString) {
      try {
          gson.fromJson(jsonInString, Object.class);
          return true;
      } catch(com.google.gson.JsonSyntaxException ex) { 
          return false;
      }
  }
}

A simple test follows here:

//A valid JSON String to parse.
String validJsonString = "{ \"developers\": [{ \"firstName\":\"Linus\" , \"lastName\":\"Torvalds\" }, " +
        "{ \"firstName\":\"John\" , \"lastName\":\"von Neumann\" } ]}";

// Invalid String with a missing parenthesis at the beginning.
String invalidJsonString = "\"developers\": [ \"firstName\":\"Linus\" , \"lastName\":\"Torvalds\" }, " +
        "{ \"firstName\":\"John\" , \"lastName\":\"von Neumann\" } ]}";

boolean firstStringValid = JSONUtils.isJSONValid(validJsonString); //true
boolean secondStringValid = JSONUtils.isJSONValid(invalidJsonString); //false

Please, observe that there could be a "minor" issue due to trailing commas that will be fixed in release 3.0.0.

A wild idea, try parsing it and catch the exception:

import org.json.*;

public boolean isJSONValid(String test) {
    try {
        new JSONObject(test);
    } catch (JSONException ex) {
        // edited, to include @Arthur's comment
        // e.g. in case JSONArray is valid as well...
        try {
            new JSONArray(test);
        } catch (JSONException ex1) {
            return false;
        }
    }
    return true;
}

This code uses org.json JSON API implementation that is available on github, in maven and partially on Android.