title: Overview sidebar_position: 1 id: index license: | Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file distributed with this work for additional information regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file to You under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the “License”); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
Fory JSON is Apache Fory's thread-safe JSON codec for Java, Kotlin, and Scala. It provides interpreted and generated codecs for Java objects, records, immutable creator-based classes, common JDK types, generic containers, Kotlin models and semantic types, Scala models and collections, and custom complete-value codecs.
Fory JSON is a separate data format from Fory‘s binary native and xlang protocols. Use it when a system must exchange ordinary JSON with browsers, APIs, logs, configuration, or another JSON implementation. Use the Fory binary protocol when you need cross-language schema metadata, reference identity, circular graphs, or Fory’s binary-only features.
| Goal | Page |
|---|---|
| First runnable JSON round trip | Getting Started |
| Understand Java object mapping and configuration | Object Mapping |
| Configure properties, creators, values, validators, and mixins | Annotations |
| Extend complete values, children, and map keys | Custom Codecs |
| Package and distribute reusable JSON extensions | Modules |
| Use data classes, Kotlin nullability, defaults, and value types | Kotlin |
| Use case classes, Scala collections, and Scala enums | Scala |
| Deploy on Android | Android |
| Build a GraalVM native image | GraalVM Native Image |
| Decode input safely | Security |
| Diagnose failures | Troubleshooting |
The Java JSON benchmark compares fory-json, Jackson, and Gson with the same data. Results below are single-threaded throughput measurements on an Apple M4 Pro with JDK 26.0.1; higher is better. See the complete benchmark report for the command, environment, and measurement configuration.
| Representation | Operation | fory-json ops/sec | jackson ops/sec | gson ops/sec |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| String | Serialize | 7,387,465 | 2,049,368 | 1,084,042 |
| String | Deserialize | 2,897,955 | 1,074,885 | 902,772 |
| UTF-8 bytes | Serialize | 10,375,498 | 1,868,614 | 1,037,211 |
| UTF-8 bytes | Deserialize | 3,077,158 | 1,268,397 | 933,079 |
For binary serialization, start with Java Object Serialization and choose xlang or native. Binary builder options are documented separately in Java Configuration.