GsonBuilder

GsonBuilder is a component of the Google Gson library for Java, used to construct configurable Gson instances. It follows the builder pattern, allowing chaining of configuration methods, with create() producing the final Gson object.

Among configurable options are pretty printing (setPrettyPrinting), suppression or escaping of HTML characters (disableHtmlEscaping), and whether to include null fields (serializeNulls). You can control which fields are serialized by using excludeFieldsWithoutExposeAnnotation() or excludeFieldsWithModifiers(int), and you can customize how Java field names map to JSON keys with setFieldNamingPolicy(...) or setFieldNamingStrategy(...). Date handling is configurable via setDateFormat(...). Version-based inclusion can be controlled with setVersion(double). You can also enable lenient parsing with setLenient().

GsonBuilder supports registering custom type adapters and factories to handle specific types, via registerTypeAdapter(Type, Object) and registerTypeAdapterFactory(...). You can provide custom serializers, deserializers, and TypeAdapters for complex objects and for third-party types. There is also support for instance creators and exclusion strategies to fine-tune serialization and deserialization.

Once configured, calling create() returns a Gson instance that is ready to use. Gson instances produced by GsonBuilder are thread-safe and reusable across the application.