How correctly produce JSON by RESTful web service?

You can annotate your bean with jaxb annotations.

  @XmlRootElement
  public class MyJaxbBean {
    public String name;
    public int age;

    public MyJaxbBean() {} // JAXB needs this

    public MyJaxbBean(String name, int age) {
      this.name = name;
      this.age = age;
    }
  }

and then your method would look like this:

   @GET @Produces("application/json")
   public MyJaxbBean getMyBean() {
      return new MyJaxbBean("Agamemnon", 32);
   }

There is a chapter in the latest documentation that deals with this:

https://jersey.java.net/documentation/latest/user-guide.html#json

@POST
@Path ("Employee")
@Consumes("application/json")
@Produces("application/json")
public JSONObject postEmployee(JSONObject jsonObject)throws Exception{
    return jsonObject;
}       

You could use a package like org.json http://www.json.org/java/

Because you will need to use JSONObjects more often.

There you can easily create JSONObjects and put some values in it:

 JSONObject json = new JSONObject();
 JSONArray array=new JSONArray();
    array.put("1");
    array.put("2");
    json.put("friends", array);

    System.out.println(json.toString(2));


    {"friends": [
      "1",
      "2"
    ]}

edit This has the advantage that you can build your responses in different layers and return them as an object

@GET
@Path("/friends")
@Produces(MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON)
public String getFriends() {

    // here you can return any bean also it will automatically convert into json 
    return "{'friends': ['Michael', 'Tom', 'Daniel', 'John', 'Nick']}";
}