Reading YAML in Java without boiler plate

Question

I was wondering if there is a way to read a YAML file in Java without having to create a lot of POJO's but still have the ability to cleanly read the elements of the YAML. Meaning, not messing with LinkedHashmaps. Is there a library or something that can do this?

Thanks in advance Regards

Answer 1

You can use Jackson library, the ObjectMapper (the most important class of that library) has a method readTree which returns a JsonNode, which you can read and traverse. Usage is pretty simple:

String yamlString = 
        "---\n" +
        "name: Bob\n" +
        "age: 35";
ObjectMapper mapper = new ObjectMapper(new YAMLFactory());
JsonNode root = mapper.readTree(yamlString);
String name = root.get("name").asText();
int age = root.get("age").asInt();

Make sure you check some tutorials and don't get confused if you find too much stuff about JSON, because Jackson has been originally a library parsing JSON, other formats were added later.