How to use the org.json Java library with Java 7

Question

I need some simple JSON parsing in my application and the Douglas Crockford library seems exactly what I need.

However, I seem to be running into a problem. I'm getting the following error:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: org/json/JSONObject : Unsupported major.minor version 52.0

I Googled around a bit and I get the impression that this is due to some version incompatibility. I've tried changing Java versions but it doesn't seem to help. I'm using Java 7 and Java 7 features in my program and ultimately I want to use Java 7.

How can I resolve this issue?

PS: I looked at Jackson and GSON and definitely don't want to use either so please don't suggest as an alternative.

Answer 1

Have you tried using an older version of the package?

Try: http://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.json/json/20140107

Answer 2

Since your are using JDK1.7, change to the older version will work!

<groupId>org.json</groupId>
    <artifactId>json</artifactId>
    <version>20140107</version>
</dependency>

Answer 3

You should use version 20230618 for Java 6 or 7. There were a few older versions where they accidentally broke Java 6, but Java 7 support should be ok until 20230618
org.json json 20230618

See their release notes: https://github.com/stleary/JSON-java/blob/master/docs/RELEASES.md

20231013 First release with minimum Java version 1.8. Recent commits, including fixes for CVE-2023-5072.

20230618 Final release with Java 1.6 compatibility. Future releases will require Java 1.8 or greater.